The fears of Renard and the hopes of Noailles were occasioned by the
unanimity of Catholics and heretics in the opposition to the marriage;
yet, so singular was the position of parties, that this very unanimity
was the condition which made the marriage possible. The Catholic lords
and gentlemen were jealous of English independence, and, had they
stood alone, they would have coerced the queen into an abandonment of
her intentions: but, if they dreaded a Spanish sovereign, they hated
unorthodoxy more, and if they permitted, or assisted in the schemes of
the Reformers, they feared that they might lose the control of the
situation when the immediate object was obtained. Those who were under
the influence of Gardiner desired to restore persecution; and
persecution, which was difficult with Mary on the throne, would be
impossible under a sovereign brought in by a revolution. They made a
favourite of Courtenay, but they desired to marry him to the queen,
not to Elizabeth: Gardiner told the young earl that he would sooner
see him the husband of the vilest drab who could be picked out of the
London kennels.[181]
[Footnote 181: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
Thus, from their murmurs, they seemed to be on the edge of rebellion;
yet, when the point of action came, they halted, uncertain what to do,
unwilling to acquiesce, yet without resolution to resist. From a
modern point of view the wisest policy was that recommended by Paget.
The claim of the Queen of Scots on the throne unquestionably made it
prudent for England to strengthen herself by some powerful foreign
alliance; sufficient precautions could be devised for the security of
the national independence; and, so far from England being in danger of
being drawn into the war on the continent, Lord Paget said that, if
England would accept Philip heartily, the war would be at an end.
Elizabeth of France might marry Don Carlos, taking with her the French
pretensions to Naples and Milan as a dowry. Another French princess
might be given to the expatriated Philibert, and Savoy and Piedmont
restored with her. "You," {p.080} Paget said to Noailles, "by your
Dauphin's marriage forced us to be friends with the Scots; we, by our
queen's marriage, will force you to be friends with the emperor."[182]
[Footnote 182: "Le dict Paget me respondict qu'il
n'estoit ja besoing d'entrer en si grande jalousie,
et que tout ainsi que nous les avions faicts amys
avecques les Escossoys, ce marriage seroit aussy
cause que nous serions amys avecques
l'Empereur."--Noailles to the King of France,
December 26. Compare also the letter of December
23, _Ambassades_, vol. ii. pp. 334-356.]
Paget, however, was detested as an upstart, and detested still more as
a latitudinarian; he could form no party, and the queen made use of
him only to support her in her choice of the Prince of Spain, as in
turn she would use Gardiner to destroy the Protestants; and thus the
two great factions in the state neutralised each other's action in a
matter in which both were equally anxious; and Mary, although with no
remarkable capacity, without friends and ruined, if at any moment she
lost courage, was able to go her own way in spite of her subjects.
The uncertainty was, how long so anomalous a state of things would
continue. The marriage, being once decided on, Mary could think of
nothing else, and even religion sank into the second place. Reginald
Pole, chafing the imperial bridle between his lips, vexed her, so
Renard said, from day to day, with his untimely importunities;[183]
the restoration of the mass gave him no pleasure so long as the papal
legate was an exile; and in vain the queen laboured to draw from him
some kind of approval. He saw her only preferring carnal pleasures to
her duty to Heaven; and, indifferent himself to all interests save
those of the See of Rome, he was irritated with the emperor, irritated
with the worldly schemes to which he believed that his mission had
been sacrificed. He talked angrily of the marriage. The queen heard,
through Wotton the ambassador at Paris, that he had said openly, it
should never take place;[184] while Peto, the Greenwich friar, who was
in his train, wrote to her, reflecting impolitely on her age, and
adding Scripture commendations of celibacy as the more perfect
state.[185] It was even feared {p.081} that the impatient legate had
advised the pope to withhold the dispensations.
[Footnote 183: Renard to Charles V.: November 14,
November 28, December 3, December 8, December 11:
_Rolls House MSS._]
[Footnote 184: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._ The queen wrote to Wotton to learn his
authority. The Venetian ambassador, Wotton said,
was the person who had told him; but the quarter
from which the information originally came, he
believed, might be relied on.--Wotton to the Queen
and Council: _MS. State Paper Office_.]
[Footnote 185: "Un des principaulx qu'il a avec luy
que se nomme William Peto, theologien, luy a
escript luy donnant conseil de non se marrier, et
vivre en celibat; meslant en ses lettres plusieurs
allegations du Vieux et Nouveau Testament, repetant
x ou xii fois qu'elle tombera en la puissance et
servitude du mari, qu'elle n'aura enfans, sinon
soubz danger de sa vie pour l'age dont elle
est."--Renard to Charles V.: Tytler, vol. ii. p.
303.]
Mary, beyond measure afflicted, wrote to Pole at last, asking what in
his opinion she ought to do. He sent his answer through a priest, by
whom it could be conveyed with the greatest emphasis. First, he said,
she must pray to God for a spirit of counsel and fortitude: next, she
must, at all hazards, relinquish the name of Head of the Church; and,
since she could trust neither peer nor prelate, she must recall
parliament, go in person to the House of Commons, and demand
permission with her own mouth for himself to return to England. The
holy see was represented in his person, and was freshly insulted in
the refusal to receive him; the pope's vast clemency had volunteered
unasked to pardon the crimes of England; if the gracious offer was not
accepted, the legacy would be cancelled, the national guilt would be
infinitely enhanced. The emperor talked of prudence; in the service of
God prudence was madness; and, so long as the schism continued, her
attempts at reform were vanity, and her seat upon the throne was
usurpation. Let her tell the truth to the House of Commons, and the
House of Commons would hear.[186]
[Footnote 186: Instructions of Cardinal Pole to
Thomas Goldwell: _Cotton MSS. Titus_, B. 11.]
"Your majesty will see," wrote Renard, enclosing to Charles a copy of
these advices, "the extent of the cardinal's discretion, and how
necessary it is that for the present he be kept at a distance." The
pope was not likely to reject the submission of England at any moment,
late or early, when England might be pleased to offer it, and could
well afford to wait. Julius was wiser than his legate. Pole was not
recalled, but exhorted to patience, and a letter or message from Rome
cooled Mary's anxieties. Meanwhile the marriage was to be expedited
with as much speed as possible; the longer the agitation continued,
the greater the danger; while the winter was unfavourable to
revolutionary movements, and armed resistance to the prince's landing
would be unlikely so long as the season prevented large bodies of men
from keeping the field.[187]
[Footnote 187: Renard dwelt much on this point as a
reason for haste.]
The emperor, therefore, in the beginning of December, sent over the
draft of a marriage treaty; and if the security that the articles
would be observed had equalled the form in which they were conceived,
the English might have afforded to lay aside their alarms. Charles
seemed to have anticipated almost every {p.082} point on which the
insular jealousy would be sensitive. The Prince of Spain should bear
the title of King of England so long, but so long only as the queen
should be alive; and the queen should retain the disposal of all
affairs in the realm, and the administration of the revenues. The
queen, in return, should share Philip's titles, present and
prospective, with the large settlement of L60,000 a year upon her for
her life. Don Carlos, the prince's child by his first wife, would, if
he lived, inherit Spain, Sicily, the Italian provinces, and the
Indies. But Burgundy and the Low Countries should be settled on the
offspring of the English marriage, and be annexed to the English
crown; and this prospect, splendid in itself, was made more
magnificent by the possibility that Don Carlos might die. Under all
contingencies, the laws and liberties of the several countries should
be held inviolate and inviolable.
In such a treaty the emperor conferred everything, and in return
received nothing; and yet, to gain the alliance, a negotiation already
commenced for the hand of the Infanta of Portugal was relinquished.
The liberality of the proposals was suspicious, but they were
submitted to the council, who, unable to refuse to consider them, were
obliged to admit that they were reasonable. Five additional clauses
were added, however, to which it was insisted that Philip should swear
before the contract should be completed--
1. That no foreigner, under any circumstances, should be admitted to
any office in the royal household, in the army, the forts, or the
fleet.
2. That the queen should not be taken abroad without her own consent;
and that the children--should children be born--should not be carried
out of England without consent of parliament, even though among them
might be the heir of the Spanish empire.
3. Should the queen die childless, the prince's connection with the
realm should be at an end.
4. The jewel-house and treasury should be wholly under English
control, and the ships of war should not be removed into a foreign
port.
5. The prince should maintain the existing treaties between England
and France; and England should not be involved, directly or
indirectly, in the war between France and the empire.[188]
[Footnote 188: Marriage Treaty between Mary, Queen
of England, and Philip of Spain: Rymer, vol. vi.]
These demands were transmitted to Brussels, where they were {p.083}
accepted without difficulty, and further objection could not be
ventured unless constraint was laid upon the queen. The sketch of the
treaty, with the conditions attached to it, was submitted to such of
the Lords and Commons as remained in London after the dissolution of
parliament, and the result was a sullen acquiescence.
An embassy was immediately announced as to be sent from Flanders.
Count Egmont, M. de Courieres, the Count de Lalaing, and M. de Nigry,
Chancellor of the Golden Fleece, were coming over as plenipotentiaries
of the emperor. Secret messengers went off to Rome to hasten the
dispensations--a dispensation for Mary to marry her cousin, and a
dispensation which also was found necessary permitting the ceremony to
be performed by a bishop in a state of schism. The marriage could be
solemnised at once on their arrival, the ambassadors standing as
Philip's representatives, while Sir Philip Hoby, Bonner, Bedford, and
Lord Derby would go to Spain to receive the prince's oaths, and escort
him to England. Again and again the queen pressed haste. Ash-Wednesday
fell on the 6th of February, and in Lent she might not marry. Renard
assured her that the prince should be in her arms before Septuagesima,
and all her trials would be over. The worst danger which he now
anticipated was from some unpleasant collision which might arise after
the prince's landing; and he had advised the emperor to have the
Spaniards who would form the retinue selected for their meekness. They
would meet with insolence from the English, which they would not
endure, if they had the spirit to resent it; their dispositions,
therefore, must be mild and forgiving.[189]
[Footnote 189: Renard to Charles V., December 11:
_Rolls House MSS._]
And yet Renard could not hide from himself, and the lords did not hide
from Mary, that their consent was passive only; that their reluctance
was vehement as ever. Bedford said, if he went to Spain, he must go
without attendance, for no one would accompany him. Lord Derby refused
to be one of the ambassadors, and with Sir Edward Waldegrave and Sir
Edward Hastings told the queen that he would leave her service if she
persisted. The seditious pamphlets which were scattered everywhere
created a vague terror in the court, and the court ladies wept and
lamented in the queen's presence. The council in a body again urged
her to abandon her intention. The peers met again to consider the
marriage articles. Gardiner read them aloud, and Lord Windsor, a dull
Brutus, who till then had {p.084} never been known to utter a
reasonable word, exclaimed, amidst general applause, "You have told us
fine things of the queen, and the prince, and the emperor; what
security have we that words are more than words?" Corsairs from Brest
and Rochelle hovered in the mouth of the Channel to catch the couriers
going to and fro between Spain and London and Brussels, and to terrify
Philip with the danger of the passage. The Duke of Suffolk's brother
and the Marquis of Winchester had been heard to swear that they would
set upon him when he landed; and Renard began to doubt whether the
alliance, after all, was worth the risk attending it.[190] Mary,
however, brave in the midst of her perplexities, vowed that she would
relinquish her hopes of Philip only with her life. An army of spies
watched Elizabeth day and night, and the emperor, undeterred by Renard's
hesitation, encouraged the queen's resolution. There could be no
conspiracy as yet, Charles said, which could not be checked with
judicious firmness; and dangerous persons could be arrested and made
secure. A strong hand could do much in England, as was proved by the
success for a time of the late Duke of Northumberland.[191]
The advice fell in with Mary's own temperament; she had already been
acting in the spirit of it. A party of Protestants met in St.
Matthew's Church on the publication of the acts of the late session,
to determine how far they would obey them. Ten or twelve were seized
on the spot, and two were hanged out of hand.[192] The queen told
Hastings and Waldegrave that she would endure no opposition; they
should obey her or they should leave the council. She would raise a
few thousand men, she said, to keep her subjects in order, and she
would have a thousand Flemish horse among them. There was a difficulty
about ways and means; as fast as money came into the treasury she had
paid debts with it, and, as far as her means extended, she had
replaced chalices and roods in the parish churches. But, if she was
poor, five millions of gold had just arrived in Spain from the New
World; and, as the emperor suggested, her credit was good at Antwerp
from her honesty. Lazarus Tucker came again to the rescue. In
November, Lazarus provided L50,000 for her at fourteen per cent. In
January she required L100,000 more, and she ordered Gresham to find it
for her at low interest {p.085} or high.[193] Fortunately for Mary
the project of a standing army could not be carried out by herself
alone, and the passive resistance of the council saved her from
commencing the attempt. Neither Irish mercenaries, nor Flemish, nor
Welsh, as, two months after she was proposing to herself, were
permitted to irritate England into madness.
[Footnote 190: "The English," he said, "sont si
traictres, si inconstantes, si doubles, si
malicieux, et si faciles a esmover qu'il ne se
fault fier; et si l'alliance est grande, aussi est
elle hazardeuse pour la personne de son
Altesse."--Renard to Charles V., December 12:
_Rolls House MSS._]
[Footnote 191: Charles V. to Renard, December 24:
_Rolls House MSS._]
[Footnote 192: Renard to Charles V., December 20:
Ibid.]
[Footnote 193: The queen to Sir Thomas Gresham:
_Flanders MSS. Mary_, State Paper Office.]
While Mary was thus buffeting with the waves, on the 23rd, Count
Egmont and his three companions arrived at Calais. The French had
threatened to intercept the passage, and four English ships-of-war had
been ordered to be in waiting as their escort: these ships, however,
had not left the Thames, being detained either by weather, as the
admiral pretended, or by the ill-humour of the crews, who swore they
would give the French cruisers small trouble, should they present
themselves.[194] On Christmas-day ill-looking vessels were hanging in
mid-channel, off Calais harbour, but the ambassadors were resolved to
cross at all risks. They stole over in the darkness on the night of
the 26th, and were at Dover by nine in the morning. Their retinue, a
very large one, was sent on at once to London; snow was on the ground,
and the boys in the streets saluted the first comers with showers of
balls. The ambassadors followed the next day, and were received in
silence, but without active insult. The emperor's choice of persons
for his purpose had been judicious. The English ministers intended to
be offensive, but they were disarmed by the courtesy of Egmont, who
charmed every one. In ten days the business connected with the treaty
was concluded. The treaty itself was sent to Brussels to be ratified,
and the dispensations from Rome, and the necessary powers from the
Prince of Spain, were alone waited for that the marriage might be
concluded in public or in private, whichever way would be most
expeditious. The queen cared only for the completion of the
irrevocable ceremony, which would bring her husband to her side before
Lent.[195]
[Footnote 194: Noailles to the King of France,
December 6: _Ambassades_, vol. ii.]
[Footnote 195: The Bishop of Arras to the
Ambassadors in England: _Granvelle Papers_, vol.
iv. p. 181, etc.]
The interval of delay was consumed in hunting-parties[196] and dinners
at the palace, where the courtiers played off before the guests the
passions of their eager mistress.[197] The enemies of {p.086} the
marriage, French and English, had no time to lose, if they intended to
prevent the completion of it.
[Footnote 196: The 10th day of January the
ambassadors rode into Hampton Court, and there they
had as great cheer as could be had, and hunted and
killed, tag and rag, with hounds and
swords.--Machyn's _Diary_.]
[Footnote 197: After dinner Lord William Howard
entered, and, seeing the queen pensive, whispered
something to her in English; then turning to us, he
asked if we knew what he had said? The queen bade
him not tell, but he paid no attention to her. He
told us he had said he hoped soon to see somebody
sitting there, pointing to the chair next her
majesty. The queen blushed, and asked him how he
could say so. He answered that he knew very well
she liked it; whereat her majesty laughed, and the
court laughed, etc.--Egmont and Renard to Charles
V.: _Rolls House MSS._]
When the queen's design was first publicly announced, the King of
France directed Noailles to tell her frankly the alarm with which it
was regarded at Paris. Henry and Montmorency said the same repeatedly,
and at great length, to Dr. Wotton. The queen might have the best
intentions of remaining at peace, but events might be too strong for
her; and they suggested, at last, that she might give a proof of the
good-will which she professed by making a fresh treaty with them.[198]
That a country should be at peace while its titular king was at war,
was a situation without a precedent. Intricate questions were certain
to arise; for instance, if a mixed fleet of English and Spanish ships
should escort the prince, or convoy his transports or treasure, or if
the English ships having Spaniards on board, should enter French
harbours. A thousand difficulties such as these might occur, and it
would be wise to provide for them beforehand.
[Footnote 198: Noailles.]
The uneasiness of the court of Paris was not allayed when the queen
met this most reasonable proposal with a refusal.[199] A clause, she
replied, was added to the marriage articles for the maintenance of the
existing treaties with France, and with that and with her own promises
the French government ought to be content. In vain Noailles pointed
out that the existing treaties would not meet the new conditions; she
was obstinate, and both Noailles and the King of France placed the
worst interpretation upon her attitude. Philip, after his arrival,
would unquestionably drag or lead her into his quarrels; and they
determined, therefore, to employ all means, secret and open, to
prevent his coming, and to co-operate with the English opposition.
[Footnote 199: Ibid.]
The time to act had arrived. Rumours were industriously circulated
that the Prince of Spain was already on the seas, bringing with him
ten thousand Spaniards, who were to be landed at the Tower, and that
eight thousand Germans were to follow from the Low Countries. Noailles
and M. d'Oysel, then on his way through London to Scotland, had an
interview with a number of lords and gentlemen, who undertook to place
themselves at the head of an insurrection, and to depose the queen.
{p.087} The whole country was crying out against her, and the French
ministers believed that the opposition had but to declare itself in
arms to meet with universal sympathy. They regarded the persons with
whom they were dealing as the representatives of the national
discontent; but on this last point they were fatally mistaken.
Noailles spoke generally of lords and gentlemen; but those with whom
d'Oysel and himself had communicated were a party of ten or twelve of
the pardoned friends of the Duke of Northumberland, or of men
otherwise notorious among the ultra-Protestants; the Duke of Suffolk
and his three brothers, Lord Thomas, Lord John, and Lord Leonard Grey;
the Marquis of Northampton; Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of the poet; Sir
Nicholas Throgmorton; Sir Peter Carew; Sir Edmund Warner; Lord
Cobham's brother-in-law; and Sir James Crofts, the late deputy of
Ireland.[200] Courtenay, who had affected orthodoxy as long as he had
hopes of the queen, was admitted into the confederacy. Cornwall and
Devonshire were to be the first counties to rise, where Courtenay
would be all-powerful by his name. Wyatt undertook to raise Kent, Sir
James Crofts the Severn border, Suffolk and his brothers the midland
counties. Forces from these four points were to converge on London,
which would then stir for itself. The French Admiral Villegaignon
promised to keep a fleet on the seas, and to move from place to place
among the western English harbours, wherever his presence would be
most useful. Plymouth had been tampered with, and the mayor and
aldermen, either really, or as a ruse to gain information, affected a
desire to receive a French garrison.[201] For the sake of their cause
the Protestant party were prepared to give to France an influence in
England as objectionable in itself, and as offensive to the majority
of the people, as the influence of Spain; and the management of the
opposition to the queen was snatched from the hands of those who might
have brought it to some tolerable issue, by a set of men to whom the
Spanish marriage was but the stalking-horse for the reimposition of
their late {p.088} tyranny. If the Duke of Northumberland, instead
of setting up a rival to Mary, had loyally admitted her to the throne
which was her right, he might have tied her hands, and secured the
progress of moderate reform. Had the great patriotic anti-papal party
been now able to combine, with no disintegrating element, they could
have prevented the marriage or made it harmless. But the ultra-party
plunged again into treason, in which they would succeed only to
restore the dominion of a narrow and blighting sectarianism.[202]
[Footnote 200: Noailles and d'Oysel to the King of
France, January 15: _Ambassades_, vol. iii.]
[Footnote 201: "Sire, tout maintenant en achevant
cette lettre, les maire et aldermans de Plymouth,
m'ont envoye prier de vous supplier les vouloir
prendre en votre protection, voulans et deliberans
mettre leur ville entre vos mains, et y recepvoir
dedans telle garrison qu'il vous plaira y envoyer;
s'estans resoubz de ne recevoir aulcunement le
Prince d'Espaigne, ne s'asservir en facon que ce
soit a ses commandemens, et s'asseurans que tous
les gentilz-hommes de l'entour d'icy en feroient de
mesme."--Noailles to the King of France:
_Ambassades_, vol. ii. p. 342.]
[Footnote 202: One of the projects mooted was the
queen's murder; a scheme suggested by a man from
whom better things might have been expected,
William Thomas, the late Clerk of the Council.
Wyatt, however, would not stain the cause with dark
crimes of that kind, and threatened Thomas with
rough handling for his proposal.]
The conspirators remained in London till the second week in January.
Wyatt went into Kent, Peter Carew ran down the Channel to Exmouth in a
vessel of his own, and sent relays of horses as far as Andover for
Courtenay, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton undertaking to see the latter thus
far upon his way. The disaffection was already simmering in
Devonshire. There was a violent scene among the magistrates at the
Christmas quarter-sessions at Exeter. A countryman came in and
reported that he had been waylaid and searched by a party of strange
horsemen in steel saddles, "under the gallows at the hill top," at
Fair-mile, near Sir Peter Carew's house. His person had been mistaken,
it seemed, but questions were asked, inquiries made, and ugly language
had been used about the queen. On Carew's arrival the ferment
increased. One of his lacqueys, mistaking intention for fact,
whispered in Exeter that "my Lord of Devonshire was at Mohun's
Ottery."[203] Six horses heavily loaded passed in, at midnight,
through the city gates. The panniers were filled with harness and
hand-guns from Sir Peter's castle at Dartmouth.[204] Sir John
Chichester, Sir Arthur Champernowne, Peter and Gawen Carew, and Gybbes
of Silverton, had met in private, rumour said for no good purpose; and
the Exeter Catholics were anxious and agitated. They had been all
disarmed after the insurrection of 1549, the castle was in ruins, the
city walls were falling down. Should Courtenay come, the worst
consequences were anticipated.
[Footnote 203: The house of Sir Peter Carew.]
[Footnote 204: Miscellaneous Depositions on the
State of Devonshire: _MS. Domestic, Mary_, vol. ii.
State Paper Office.]
But Courtenay did not come. After Carew had left London, he became
nervous; when the horses were reported to be ready, he lingered about
the court; he flattered himself that the queen {p.089} had changed
her mind in his favour; and two nights before the completion of the
treaty he sate up, affecting to expect to be sent for to marry her on
the spot.[205] Finding the message did not arrive, he gave an order to
his tailor to prepare a splendid court costume, adding perhaps some
boasting words, which were carried to Gardiner. The chancellor's
regard for him was sincere, and went beyond a desire to make him
politically useful. He sent for him, cross-questioned him, and by the
influence of a strong mind over a weak one, drew out as much as
Courtenay knew of the secrets of the plot.[206]
[Footnote 205: Instructions to la Marque: Noailles,
vol. iii. p. 25, etc.]
[Footnote 206: Noailles to the King of France:
_Ambassades_, vol. iii. p. 31.]
The intention was to delay, if possible, an open declaration of
rebellion a few weeks longer--till the Prince of Spain's arrival
should raise the ferment to boiling point. Gardiner, who was
determined, at all events, to prevent the Protestants from making
head, informed the queen, without mentioning Courtenay's name, that he
had cause to suspect Sir Peter Carew. A summons was despatched to
Devonshire to require Sir Peter and his brother to return to London;
and thus either to compel them to rise prematurely, without
Courtenay's assistance, or, if they complied, to enable the court to
secure their persons. The desired effect was produced; Carew had waded
too deep in treason to trust himself in Gardiner's hands. He wrote an
excuse, yet protesting his loyalty; and he invited the inhabitants of
Exeter to join in a petition to the crown against the marriage, as a
first step towards a rising.
But the Carews were notorious and unpopular; the justices of the peace
at the sessions had been just occupied with a Protestant outrage
committed by one of their nearest friends,[207] and their true object
was suspected. The barns of Crediton were not forgotten, nor the
massacre of the prisoners at Clyst, and without Courtenay they were
powerless. Their invitation met with no response; and Chichester and
Champernowne, seeing how the tide was setting, washed their hands of
the {p.090} connection. Sir Thomas Dennys, a Catholic gentleman of
the county, took command of Exeter, sent express for the sheriff, Sir
Richard Edgecumbe, of Cotteyll, to come to his help, and as well as he
could he put the city in a state of defence.[208] Carew retired to
Mohun's Ottery, when an order came to Dennys from the court for his
arrest.
[Footnote 207: "On the morning of Christmas-day
came twelve neighbours of Silverton, being the
parish where Mr. Gybbes dwelleth, and they
complained to me of a cross of latten, and of an
altar-cloth stolen out of the church before that
time; and that the cross was set up upon a gate or
upon a hedge by the way, where the picture of
Christ was dressed with a paste or such like tyre,
and the picture of our Lady and St. John tied by
threads to the arms of the cross, like thieves."
"Mr. Gybbes" could not be actually convicted of
having been the perpetrator, but he was "vehemently
suspected," and, when examined, had used "vile
words."--Depositions of John Prideaux: MS. _Mary,
Domestic_, vol. ii. State Paper Office.]
[Footnote 208: Depositions of John Prideaux: _MS.
Mary, Domestic_, vol. ii. State Paper Office.]
Dennys, who desired Carew's escape more than his capture, replied that
for the moment he could not execute the order. Mohun's Ottery could
not be taken without cannon, and wet weather had made the roads
impassable. Meantime he gave Sir Peter notice of his danger; and Sir
Peter, disposing in haste of his farm stock to raise a supply of
money, crossed the country to Weymouth, embarked in a vessel which
"Mr. Walter Raleigh" had brought round to meet him, and sailed for
France.[209]
[Footnote 209: Ibid.]
One arm of the conspiracy was thus lopped off at the first blow. But,
although Courtenay's treachery was known, some days elapsed before the
ill success of Carew was heard of in London. Courtenay had been
trusted only so far as his intended share in the action had made it
necessary to trust him, and the confederates were chiefly anxious
that, having broken down, he should be incapacitated from doing
further mischief by being restored to the Tower. Courtenay, wrote
Noailles, has thrown away his chance of greatness, and will now
probably die miserably. Lord Thomas Grey was heard to say that, as
Courtenay had proved treacherous he would take his place, and run his
chance for the crown or the scaffold.[210]
[Footnote 210: Noailles.]
They would, perhaps, have still delayed till they had received
authentic accounts from Devonshire; but the arrest of Sir Edmund
Warner, and one or two others, assured them that too much of their
projects had transpired; and on the 22nd of January Sir Thomas Wyatt
called a meeting of his friends at Allingham Castle, on the Medway.
The commons of Kent were the same brave, violent, and inflammable
people whom John Cade, a century before, had led to London; the
country gentlemen were generally under Wyatt's influence. Sir R.
Southwell, the sheriff for the year, had been among the loudest
objectors in parliament to the marriage; and if Southwell joined in
the rising he would bring with him Lord Abergavenny.[211] Lord Cobham,
Wyatt's uncle, was known to wish him well. Sir {p.091} Thomas
Cheyne, the only other person of weight in the county, would be loyal
to the queen, but Wyatt had tampered with his tenants; Cheyne could
bring a thousand men into the field, but they would desert when led
out, and there was nothing to fear from them. Whether Southwell and
Cobham would act openly on Wyatt's side was the chief uncertainty; it
was feared that Southwell might desire to keep within the limits of
loyal opposition; Cobham offered to send his sons, but "the sending of
sons," some member of the meeting said, "was the casting away of the
Duke of Northumberland; their lives were as dear to them as my Lord
Cobham's was to him; let him come himself and set his foot by
them."[212] The result of the conference was a determination to make
the venture. Thursday the 25th was the day agreed on for the rising,
and the gentlemen present went in their several directions to prepare
the people.
[Footnote 211: Confession of Anthony Norton: _MS.
Mary, Domestic_, vol. iii. State Paper Office.]
[Footnote 212: Confession of Anthony Norton: _MS.
Mary, Domestic_, vol. iii. State Paper Office.]
Meantime Gardiner was following the track which Courtenay had opened.
He knew generally the leaders of the conspiracy, yet uncertain, in the
universal perplexity, how any one would act, he knew not whom to
trust. To send Courtenay out of the way, he allowed a project to be
set on foot for despatching him on an embassy to Brussels (January
23); and anxious, perhaps, not to alarm Mary too much, he simply told
her what she and Renard knew already, that treasonable designs were on
foot to make Elizabeth queen. In a conversation about Elizabeth the
chancellor agreed with Renard that it would be well to arrest her
without delay. "Were but the emperor in England," Gardiner said, "she
would be disposed of with little difficulty."[213] Unfortunately, the
spies had as yet detected no cause for suspicion on which the
government could act legitimately.
[Footnote 213: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
Mary, ignorant that she was in immediate danger, and only vaguely
uneasy, looked to Philip's coming as the cure of her discomforts. "Let
the prince come," she said to Renard, "and all will be well." She said
she would raise eight thousand men and keep them in London as his
guard and hers; she would send a fleet into the Channel and sweep the
French into their harbours; only let him come before Lent, which was
now but a fortnight distant: "give him my affectionate love," she
added; "tell him that I will be all to him that a wife ought to be;
and tell him, too [delightful message to an already hesitating
bridegroom], tell him to bring his own cook with him" for fear he
should be poisoned,[214] The ceremony, could it have been
accomplished, {p.092} would have been a support to her; but the
forms from Rome were long in coming. On the 24th of January the
emperor was at last able to send a brief, which, in the absence of the
bulls, he trusted might be enough to satisfy the queen's scruples.
Cuthbert Tunstal, who had been consecrated before the schism, might
officiate, and the pope would remove all irregularities
afterwards.[215] But when the letter and the brief arrived Mary was at
no leisure to be married.
[Footnote 214: Ibid.]
[Footnote 215: Charles V. to the Ambassadors in
England, January 24 _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv.]
Wyatt, having arranged the day for the rising, sent notice to the Duke
of Suffolk, who was still in London. On the morning of the 25th an
officer of the court appeared at the duke's house, with an intimation
that he was to repair to the queen's presence. Suffolk was in a riding
dress--"Marry!" he said, "I was coming to her grace; ye may see I am
booted and spurred; I will but break my fast and go."[216] The officer
retired. The duke collected as much money as he could lay hands
on--sent a servant to warn his brothers, and, though in bad health,
mounted his horse and rode without stopping to Lutterworth, where, on
the Sunday following, Lord John and Lord Thomas Grey joined him.
[Footnote 216: _Chronicle of Queen Mary._ Baoardo
says that Suffolk was sent for to take command of
the force which was to be sent against Wyatt. But
Wyatt's insurrection had not commenced, far less
was any resolution taken to send a force against
him. Noailles is, doubtless, right in saying that
he was to have been arrested.--_Ambassades_, vol.
iii. p. 48.]
The same morning of the 25th an alarm was rung on the church bells in
the towns and villages in all parts of Kent; and copies of a
proclamation were scattered abroad, signifying that the Spaniards were
coming to conquer the realm, and calling on loyal Englishmen to rise
and resist them. Wyatt's standard was raised at Rochester, the point
at which the insurgent forces were to unite; his friends had done
their work well, and in all directions the yeomen and the peasants
rose in arms. Cheyne threw himself into Dover Castle: Southwell and
Abergavenny held to the queen as had been feared; Abergavenny raised
two thousand men, and attacked and dispersed a party of insurgents
under Sir Henry Isly on Wrotham Heath; but Abergavenny's followers
deserted him immediately afterwards, and marched to Rochester to
Wyatt; Southwell could do nothing; he believed that the rebellion
would spread to London, and that Mary would be lost.[217]
[Footnote 217: Southwell to Sir William Petre: _MS.
Mary. Domestic_, State Paper Office.]
{p.093} On the 26th, Wyatt, being master of Rochester and the Medway,
seized the queen's ships that were in the river, took possession of
their guns and ammunition, proclaimed Abergavenny, Southwell, and
another gentleman traitors to the commonwealth,[218] and set himself
to organise the force which continued to pour in upon him. Messengers,
one after another, hurried to London with worse and worse news;
Northampton was arrested and sent to the Tower, but Suffolk and his
brothers were gone; and, after all which had been said of raising
troops, when the need came for them there were none beyond the
ordinary guard. The queen had to rely only on the musters of the city
and the personal retainers of the council and the other peers; both of
which resources she had but too much reason to distrust. In fact, the
council, dreading the use to which the queen might apply a body of
regular troops, had resisted all her endeavours to raise such a body;
Paget had laboured loyally for a fortnight, and at the end he assured
the queen on his knees that he had not been allowed to enlist a
man.[219] Divided on all other points, the motley group of ministers
agreed to keep Mary powerless; with the exception of Gardiner and
Paget, they were all, perhaps, unwilling to check too soon a
demonstration which, kept within bounds, might prove the justice of
their own objections.
[Footnote 218: "You shall understand that Henry
Lord of Abergavenny; Robert Southwell, knight, and
George Clarke, gentleman, have most traitorously,
to the disturbance of the commonwealth, stirred and
raised up the queen's most loving subjects of this
realm, to [maintain the] most wicked and devilish
enterprise of certain wicked and perverse
councillors, to the utter confusion of this her
Grace's realm, and the perpetual servitude of all
her most loving subjects. In consideration whereof,
we Sir Thos. Wyatt, knight, Sir George Harper,
knight, Anthony Knyvet, esq., with all the faithful
gentlemen of Kent, with the trusty commons of the
same, do pronounce and declare the said Henry Lord
of Abergavenny, Robert Southwell, and George Clarke
to be traitors to God, the Crown, and the
commonwealth."--_MS. Mary, Domestic_, State Paper
Office.]
[Footnote 219: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]
The queen, however, applied to the corporation of the city (January
27), and obtained a promise of five hundred men; she gave the command
to the Duke of Norfolk, on whose integrity she knew that she could
rely; and, sending a herald to Rochester with a pardon, if the rebels
would disperse, she despatched Norfolk, Sir Henry Jerningham, and the
young Lord Ormond, to Gravesend, without waiting for an answer. The
city bands were to follow them immediately. Afraid that Elizabeth
would fly before she could be secured, the queen wrote a letter to her
studiously gracious, in which she told her that, in the disturbed
state of the country, she was uneasy for her safety, and recommended
{p.094} her to take shelter with herself in the palace.[220] Had
Elizabeth obeyed, she would have been instantly arrested; but she was
ill, and wrote that she was unable to move. The next day evidence came
into Gardiner's hands which he trusted would consign her at last to
the scaffold.
[Footnote 220: Strype, vol. v. p. 127. Mr. Tytler
appeals to this letter as an evidence of the good
feeling of the queen towards her sister; but many
and genuine as were Mary's good qualities, she may
not be credited with a regard for Elizabeth.
Renard's letters explain her real sentiments, and
account for her outward graciousness. She had
already consulted with Renard and Gardiner on the
necessity of sending her to the Tower; and, on the
29th of January, as the princess did not avail
herself of the queen's proposal, Renard describes
himself to the emperor as pressing her immediate
arrest.--_Rolls House MSS._]
The King of France had sent a message to the confederates that he had
eighty vessels in readiness, with eighteen companies of infantry, and
that he waited to learn on what part of the coast they should effect a
landing.[221] The dangerous communication had been made known to the
court. The French ambassador had been narrowly watched, and one of his
couriers who left London on the 26th with despatches for Paris was
followed to Rochester, where he saw, or attempted to see, Wyatt. The
courier, after leaving the town, was waylaid by a party of Lord
Cobham's servants in the disguise of insurgents; his despatches were
taken from him and sent to the chancellor, who found in the packet a
letter of Noailles to the king in cypher, and a copy of Elizabeth's
answer to the queen. Although in the latter there was no treason, yet
it indicated a suspicious correspondence. The cypher, could it be
read, might be expected to contain decisive evidence against her.[222]
[Footnote 221: Renard to Charles V., January 29:
_Rolls House MSS._]
[Footnote 222: A letter from Gardiner to Sir
William Petre is in the State Paper Office, part of
which he wrote with the cypher open under his eyes
in the first heat of the discovery. The breadth and
depth of the pen-strokes express the very pulsation
of his passion:--
"As I was in hand with other matters," the
paragraph runs, "was delivered such letters as in
times past I durst not have opened; but now,
somewhat heated with these treasons, I waxed
bolder, wherein I trust I shall be borne with;
wherein hap helpeth me, for they be worth the
breaking up an I could wholly decypher them,
wherein I will spend somewhat of my leisure, if I
can have any. But this appeareth, that the letter
written from my Lady Elizabeth to the Queen's
Highness, now late in her excuse, is taken a matter
worthy to be sent into France; for I have the copy
of it in the French Ambassador's packet. I will
know what can be done in the decyphering, and
to-morrow remit that I cannot do unto
you."--Gardiner to Petre: _MS. Mary, Domestic_,
State Paper Office.]
Meantime the herald had not been admitted into Rochester. He had read
the queen's message on the bridge (January 27), and, being answered by
Wyatt's followers that they required no pardon, for they had done no
wrong, he retired. Sir George {p.095} Harper, who was joint
commander with Wyatt, stole away the same evening to Gravesend, and
presented himself to Norfolk. The rebels, he said, were discontented
and irresolute; for himself he desired to accept the queen's pardon,
which he was ready to earn by doing service against them; if the duke
would advance without delay, he would find no resistance, and Wyatt
would fall into his hands.
The London bands arrived the following afternoon (January 28), and
Norfolk determined to take Harper's advice. The weather was "very
terrible." On Monday morning it blew so hard that no boat could live;
Wyatt, therefore, would be unable to escape by the river, and an
immediate advance was resolved upon. Sir Thomas Cheyne was coming up
from Dover; Lord William Howard was looked for hourly, and Abergavenny
was again exerting himself: Lord Cobham had urged the duke to wait a
few days, and had told him that he had certain knowledge from Wyatt
himself that "the Londoners would not fight:"[223] but Norfolk was
confident; the men had assured him of their loyalty; and at four
o'clock on Monday afternoon he was on the sloping ground facing
towards Rochester, within cannon-shot of the bridge. The duke was
himself in front, with Ormond, Jerningham, and eight "field-pieces,"
which he had brought with him. A group of insurgents were in sight
across the water, a gun was placed in position to bear upon them; and
the gunner was blowing his match, when Sir Edward Bray galloped up,
crying out that the "white coats," as the London men were called, were
changing sides. The duke had fallen into a trap which Harper had laid
for him. Turning round, he saw Brett, the London captain, with all his
men, and with Harper at his side, advancing and shouting, "A Wyatt! a
Wyatt! we are all Englishmen!" The first impulse was to turn the gun
upon them; the second, and more prudent, was to spring on his horse,
and gallop with half a dozen others for his life. His whole force had
deserted, and guns, money, baggage, and five hundred of the best
troops in London fell into the insurgents' hands, and swelled their
ranks.
[Footnote 223: Norfolk to the Council from
Gravesend, Sunday, January 28, Monday, January 29:
_MS. Domestic, Mary_, State Paper Office.]
No sooner was the duke gone, than Wyatt in person came out over the
bridge. "As many as will tarry with us," he cried, "shall be welcome;
as many as will depart, let them go," Very few accepted the latter
offer. Three parts, even of Norfolk's private attendants, took service
with the rebel leader.
{p.096} The prestige of success decided all who were wavering in the
county. Abergavenny was wholly forsaken; Southwell escaped to the
court; Cheyne wrote to the council that he was no longer sure of any
one; "the abominable treason of those that came with the Duke of
Norfolk had infected the whole population."[224] Cobham continued to
hold off, but his sons came into Rochester the evening of the duke's
flight; and Wyatt sent a message to the father expressing his sorrow
that he had been hitherto backward; promising to forgive him, however,
and requiring him to be in the camp the next day, when the army would
march on London. Cobham still hesitating, two thousand men were at the
gates of his house[225] by daybreak the next morning (January 30). He
refused to lower the drawbridge, but the chains were cut with a
cannon-shot, the gates were blown open, and the rebels were storming
in when his servants forced him to surrender. The house was pillaged;
an oath was thrust on Cobham that he would join, which he took with
the intention of breaking it; and the rebels, perhaps seeing cause to
distrust him, carried him off to Wyatt as a prisoner.[226] That night
the insurgents rested at Gravesend. The next day (January 31) they
reached Dartford. Their actual numbers were insignificant, but their
strength was the disaffection of London, where the citizens were too
likely to follow the example which had been set at Rochester.
[Footnote 224: "It is a great deal more than
strange," he added, "to see the beastliness of the
people, to see how earnestly they be bent in this
their most devilish enterprise, and will by no
means be persuaded the contrary but that it is for
the commonweal of all the realm."--Cheyne to the
Council: _MS. Mary, Domestic_, vol. iii.]
[Footnote 225: Cowling Castle, a place already
famous in English Reforming history as the
residence of Sir John Oldcastle.]
[Footnote 226: He contrived to send a letter to the
queen the evening of the day on which his house was
taken. After describing the scene, he added: "If
your Grace will assemble forces in convenient
numbers, they not being above 2000 men, and yet not
500 of them able and good armed men, but rascals
and rakehells such as live by spoil, I doubt not
but your Grace shall have the victory."--Cobham to
the Queen: _MS. State Paper Office_. But Cobham
under-estimated the numbers, and undervalued the
composition of Wyatt's forces, perhaps
intentionally. Renard, who is generally accurate,
says that the rebels at this time amounted to three
thousand; Noailles says, twelve or fifteen
thousand.]
Mary's situation was now really alarming: she was without money,
notwithstanding the Jews; she had no troops; of all her ministers
Paget alone was sincerely anxious to do her service; for Gardiner, on
the subject of the marriage, was as unwilling as ever. It was rumoured
that the King of Denmark intended to unite with the French in support
of the revolutionists, and Renard began calmly to calculate that,
should this report prove {p.097} true, the queen could not be saved.
Pembroke and Clinton offered to raise another force in the city and
fight Wyatt; but, so far as Mary could tell, they would be as likely
to turn against her as to fight in her defence; and she declined their
services. Renard offered Gardiner assistance from the Low
Countries--Gardiner replied with extreme coldness that he had no
desire to see Flemish soldiers in England--and the council generally
were "so strange" in their manner, and so languid in their action,
that the ambassador could not assure himself that they were not
Wyatt's real instigators. Not a man had been raised to protect the
queen, and part of her own guard had been among the deserters at
Rochester. She appealed to the honour of the lords to take measure for
her personal safety; but they did nothing, and, it seemed, would do
nothing; if London rose, they said merely, she must retire to Windsor.
The aspect of affairs was so threatening, that Renard believed that
the marriage at least would have to be relinquished. It seemed as if
it could be accomplished only with the help of an invading army; and
although Mary would agree to any measure which would secure Philip,
the presence of foreign troops, as the emperor himself was aware,
could only increase the exasperation.[227] The queen's resolution,
however, grew with her difficulties. If she could not fight she would
not yield; and, taking matters into her own hands, she sent Sir Thomas
Cornwallis and Sir Edward Hastings to Dartford, with directions to
speak with Wyatt, if possible, alone; to tell him that she "marvelled
at his demeanour," "rising as a subject to impeach her marriage;" she
was ready to believe, however, that he thought himself acting in the
interests of the commonwealth; she would appoint persons to talk over
the subject with him, and if it should appear that the marriage would
not, as she supposed, be beneficial to the realm, she would sacrifice
her wishes.[228]
[Footnote 227: Renard to the Emperor, January 29:
_Rolls House MSS._ The Emperor to Renard, February
4: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv. p. 204.]
[Footnote 228: Instructions to Sir Thomas
Cornwallis and Sir Edward Hastings: _MS. State
Paper Office_.]
The message was not strictly honest, for the queen had no real
intention of sacrificing anything. She desired merely to gain time;
and, should Wyatt refuse, as she expected, she wished to place herself
in a better position to appeal to her subjects for help.[229] But the
move under this aspect was skilful and successful; when Cornwallis and
Hastings discharged their commission, Wyatt replied that he would
rather be trusted than {p.098} trust; he would argue the marriage
with pleasure, but he required first the custody of the Tower, and of
the queen's person, and four of the council must place themselves in
his hands as hostages.[230]
[Footnote 229: Renard to the Emperor: _Rolls House
MSS._]
[Footnote 230: Holinshed; Noailles.]
Had Wyatt, said Noailles, been able to reach London simultaneously
with this answer, he would have found the gates open and the whole
population eager to give him welcome. To his misfortune he lingered on
the way, and the queen had time to use his words against him. The two
gentlemen returned indignant at his insolence. The next morning
(February 1), Count Egmont waited on Mary to say that he and his
companions were at her service, and would stand by her to their death.
Perplexed as she was, Egmont said he found her "marvellously firm."
The marriage, she felt, must, at all events, be postponed for the
present; the prince could not come till the insurrection was at an
end; and, while she was grateful for the offer, she not only thought
it best to decline the ambassadors' kindness, but she recommended
them, if possible, to leave London and the country without delay.
Their party was large enough to irritate the people, and too small to
be of use. She bade Egmont, therefore, tell the emperor that from the
first she had put her trust in God, and that she trusted in Him still;
and for themselves, she told them to go at once, taking her best
wishes with them. They obeyed. Six Antwerp merchant sloops were in the
river below the bridge, waiting to sail. They stole on board, dropped
down the tide, and were gone.
The afternoon of the same day the queen herself, with a studied air of
dejection,[231] rode through the streets to the Guildhall, attended by
Gardiner and the remnant of the guard. In St. Paul's Churchyard she
met Pembroke, and slightly bowed as she passed him. Gardiner was
observed to stoop to his saddle. The hall was crowded with citizens:
some brought there by hatred, some by respect, many by pity, but more
by curiosity. When the queen entered she stood forward on the steps,
above the throng, and, in her deep man's voice, she spoke to
them.[232]
[Footnote 231: Vous, asseurant, sire, comme celluy
qui l'a veu, que scaichant la dicte dame aller au
diet lieu, je me deliberay en cape de veoir de
quelle visaige elle et sa compaignie y alloient;
que je congneus estre aussy triste et desploree
qu'il se peult penser.--Noailles to the King of
France, Feb. 1.]
[Footnote 232: La voce grossa et quasi di
huomo.--Giovanni Michele: Ellis, vol. ii.] series
ii.]
Her subjects had risen in rebellion against her, she said; she had
been told that the cause was her intended marriage with the {p.099}
Prince of Spain; and, believing that it was the real cause, she had
offered to hear and to respect their objections. Their leader had
betrayed in his answer his true motives; he had demanded possession of
the Tower of London and of her own person. She stood there, she said,
as lawful Queen of England, and she appealed to the loyalty of her
great city to save her from a presumptuous rebel, who, under specious
pretences, intended to "subdue the laws to his will, and to give scope
to rascals and forlorn persons to make general havoc and spoil." As to
her marriage, she had supposed that so magnificent an alliance could
not have failed to be agreeable to her people. To herself, and, she
was not afraid to say, to her council, it seemed to promise high
advantage to the commonwealth. Marriage, in itself, was indifferent to
her; she had been invited to think of it by the desire of the country
that she should have an heir; but she could continue happy in the
virgin state in which she had hitherto passed her life. She would call
a parliament and the subject should be considered in all its bearings;
if, on mature consideration, the Lords and Commons of England should
refuse to approve of the Prince of Spain as a fitting husband for her,
she promised, on the word of a queen, that she would think of him no
more.
The spectacle of her distress won the sympathy of her audience; the
boldness of her bearing commanded their respect; the promise of a
parliament satisfied, or seemed to satisfy, all reasonable demands:
and among the wealthy citizens there was no desire to see London in
possession of an armed mob, in whom the Anabaptist leaven was deeply
interfused. The speech, therefore, had remarkable success. The queen
returned to Westminster, leaving the corporation converted to the
prudence of supporting her. Twenty-five thousand men were enrolled the
next day for the protection of the crown and the capital; Lord William
Howard was associated with the mayor in the command; and Wyatt, who
had reached Greenwich on Thursday, and had wasted two days there,
uncertain whether he should not cross the river in boats to Blackwall,
arrived on Saturday morning at Southwark, to find the gates closed on
London Bridge, and the drawbridge flung down into the water.
Noailles, for the first time, believed now that the insurrection would
fail. Success or failure, in fact, would turn on the reception which
the midland counties had given to the Duke of Suffolk; and of Suffolk
authentic news had been brought to London that morning.
{p.100} On the flight of the duke being known at the court, it was
supposed immediately that he intended to proclaim his daughter and
Guilford Dudley. Rumour, indeed, turned the supposition into
fact,[233] and declared that he had called on the country to rise in
arms for Queen Jane. But Suffolk's plan was identical with Wyatt's; he
had carried with him a duplicate of Wyatt's proclamation, and,
accompanied by his brother, he presented himself in the market-place
at Leicester on the morning of Monday the 29th. Lord Huntingdon had
followed close upon his track from London; but he assured the Mayor of
Leicester that the Earl of Huntingdon was coming, not to oppose, but
to join with him. No harm was intended to the queen; he was ready to
die in her defence; his object was only to save England from the
dominion of foreigners.
[Footnote 233: "The Duke has raised evil-disposed
persons, minding her Grace's destruction, and to
advance the Lady Jane, his daughter, and Guilford
Dudley, her husband."--Royal Proclamation: _MS.
State Paper Office_. Printed in the additional
Notes to Mr. Nichols's _Chronicle of Queen Mary_.
Baoardo says that the duke actually proclaimed Lady
Jane.]
In consequence of these protestations, he was allowed to read his
proclamation; the people were indifferent; but he called about him a
few scores of his tenants and retainers from his own estates in the
country; and, on Tuesday morning, while the insurgents in Kent were
attacking Cowling Castle, Suffolk rode out of Leicester, in full
armour, at the head of his troops, intending first to move on
Coventry, then to take Kenilworth and Warwick, and so to advance on
London. The garrison at Warwick had been tampered with, and was
reported to be ready to rise. The gates of Coventry he expected to
find open. He had sent his proclamation thither the day before, by a
servant, and he had friends within the walls who had undertaken to
place the town at his disposal.
The state of Coventry was probably the state of most other towns in
England. The inhabitants were divided. The mayor and aldermen, the
fathers of families, and the men of property, were conservatives,
loyal to the queen, to the mass, and to "the cause of order." The
young and enthusiastic, supported by others who had good reasons for
being in opposition to established authorities, were those who had
placed themselves in correspondence with the Duke of Suffolk.
Suffolk's servant (his name was Thomas Rampton), on reaching the town,
on Monday evening, made a mistake in the first person to whom he
addressed himself, and received a cold answer. Two others of the
townsmen, however, immediately {p.101} welcomed him, and told him
that "the whole place was at his lord's commandment, except certain of
the town council, who feared that, if good fellows had the upper hand,
their extremities heretofore should be remembered."[234] They took
Rampton into a house, where, presently, another man entered of the
same way of thinking, and, in his own eyes, a man of importance. "My
lord's quarrel is right well known," this person said, "it is God's
quarrel, let him come; let him come, and make no stay, for this town
is his own. I say to you assuredly this town is his own. I am it."
[Footnote 234: Rampton's Confession: _MS. Domestic.
Mary_, vol. iii. State Paper Office.]
It was now night; no time was to be lost, the townsmen said. They
urged Rampton to return at once to Suffolk, and hasten his movements.
They would themselves read the proclamation at the market-cross
forthwith, and raise the people. Rampton, who had ridden far, and was
weary, wished to wait till the morning; if they were so confident of
success, a few hours could make no difference: but it appeared shortly
that the "good fellows" in Coventry were not exclusively under the
influence of piety and patriotism. If a rising commenced in the
darkness, it was admitted that "undoubted spoil and peradventure
destruction of many rich men would ensue," and with transactions of
this kind the duke's servant was unwilling to connect himself.
Thus the hours wore away, and no resolution was arrived at; and, in
the meantime, the town council had received a warning to be on their
guard. Before daybreak the constables were on the alert, the decent
citizens took possession of the gates, and the conspirators had lost
their opportunity. In the afternoon Suffolk arrived with a hundred
horse under the walls, but there was no admission for him. Whilst he
was hesitating what course to pursue, a messenger came in to say that
the Earl of Huntingdon was at Warwick. The plot for the revolt of the
garrison had been detected, and the whole country was on the alert.
The people had no desire to see the Spaniards in England; but sober,
quiet farmers and burgesses would not rise at the call of the friend
of Northumberland, and assist in bringing back the evil days of
anarchy.
The Greys had now only to provide for their personal safety.
Suffolk had an estate a few miles distant, called Astley Park, to
which the party retreated from Coventry. There the duke shared such
money as he had with him among his men, and bade them shift for
themselves. Lord Thomas Grey changed coats {p.102} with a servant,
and rode off to Wales to join Sir James Crofts. Suffolk himself, who
was ill, took refuge with his brother, Lord John, in the cottage of
one of his gamekeepers, where they hoped to remain hidden till the hue
and cry should be over, and they could escape abroad.
The cottage was considered insecure. Two bowshots south of Astley
Church there stood in the park an old decaying tree, in the hollow of
which the father of Lady Jane Grey concealed himself; and there, for
two winter days and a night, he was left without food. A proclamation
had been put out by Huntingdon for Suffolk's apprehension (January
30), and the keeper, either tempted by the reward, or frightened by
the menace against all who should give him shelter, broke his trust--a
rare example of disloyalty--and going to Warwick Castle, undertook to
betray his master's hiding-place. A party of troopers were despatched,
with the keeper for a guide; and, on arriving at Astley, they found
that the duke, unable to endure the cold and hunger longer, had
crawled out of the tree, and was warming himself by the cottage fire.
Lord John was discovered buried under some bundles of hay.[235] They
were carried off at once to the Tower, whither Lord Thomas Grey and
Sir James Crofts, who had failed as signally in Wales, soon after
followed them.[236]
[Footnote 235: Renard to the Emperor: _Rolls House
MSS._]
[Footnote 236: I follow Baoardo in the account of
the duke's capture. Renard says that he was found
in the tree by a little dog: "qu'a este grand
commencement du miracle pour le succes prospere des
affaires de la dicte dame."--Renard to the Emperor,
February 8: _MS._]
The account of his confederates' failure saluted Wyatt on his arrival
in Southwark, on the 3rd of February. The intelligence was being
published, at the moment, in the streets of London; Wyatt himself, at
the same time, was proclaimed traitor, and a reward of a hundred
pounds was offered for his capture, dead or alive. The peril, however,
was far from over; Wyatt replied to the proclamation by wearing his
name, in large letters, upon his cap; the success of the queen's
speech in the city irritated the council, who did not choose to sit
still under the imputation of having approved of the Spanish marriage.
They declared everywhere, loudly and angrily, that they had not
approved of it, and did not approve; in the city itself public feeling
again wavered, and fresh parties of the train-bands crossed the water
and deserted. The behaviour of Wyatt's followers gave the lie to the
queen's charges against them: the prisons in Southwark were not
opened; property was respected scrupulously; the only attempt at
injury was at Winchester House, and there it {p.103} was instantly
repressed; the inhabitants of the Borough entertained them with warm
hospitality; and the queen, notwithstanding her efforts, found herself
as it were besieged, in her principal city, by a handful of commoners,
whom no one ventured, or no one could be trusted, to attack. So
matters continued through Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The
lawyers at Westminster Hall pleaded in harness, the judges wore
harness under their robes; Doctor Weston sang mass in harness before
the queen; tradesmen attended in harness behind their counters. The
metropolis, on both sides of the water, was in an attitude of armed
expectation, yet there was no movement, no demonstration on either
side of popular feeling. The ominous strangeness of the situation
appalled even Mary herself.[237]
[Footnote 237: Noailles.]
By this time (February 5) the intercepted letter of Noailles had been
decyphered. It proved, if more proof was wanted, the correspondence
between the ambassador and the conspirators; it explained the object
of the rising--the queen was to be dethroned in favour of her sister;
and it was found, also, though names were not mentioned, that the plot
had spread far upwards among the noblemen by whom Mary was surrounded.
Evidence of Elizabeth's complicity it did not contain; while, to
Gardiner's mortification, it showed that Courtenay, in his confessions
to himself, had betrayed the guilt of others, but had concealed part
of his own. In an anxiety to shield him the chancellor pronounced the
cypher of Courtenay's name to be unintelligible. The queen placed the
letter in the hands of Renard, by whom it was instantly read, and the
chancellor's humour was not improved; Mary had the mortification of
feeling that she was herself the last object of anxiety either to him
or to any of her council; though Wyatt was at the gates of London, the
council could only spend the time in passionate recriminations; Paget
blamed Gardiner for his religious intolerance; Gardiner blamed Paget
for having advised the marriage; some exclaimed against Courtenay,
some against Elizabeth; but, of acting, all alike seemed incapable. If
the queen was in danger, the council said, she might fly to Windsor,
or to Calais, or she might go to the Tower. "Whatever happens," she
exclaimed to Renard, "I am the wife of the Prince of Spain; crown,
rank, life, all shall go before I will take any other husband."[238]
[Footnote 238: Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._ February 5.]
The position, however, could not be of long continuance. {p.104}
Could Wyatt once enter London, he assured himself of success; but the
gates on the bridge continued closed. Cheyne and Southwell had
collected a body of men on whom they could rely, and were coming up
behind from Rochester. Wyatt desired to return and fight them, and
then cross the water at Greenwich, as had been before proposed; but
his followers feared that he meant to escape; a backward movement
would not be permitted, and his next effort was to ascertain whether
the passage over the bridge could be forced.
London Bridge was then a long, narrow street. The gate was at the
Southwark extremity; the drawbridge was near the middle. On Sunday or
Monday night Wyatt scaled the leads of the gatehouse, climbed into a
window, and descended the stairs into the lodge. The porter and his
wife were nodding over the fire. The rebel leader bade them, on their
lives, be still, and stole along in the darkness to the chasm from
which the drawbridge had been cut away. There, looking across the
black gulf where the river was rolling below, he saw the dusky mouths
of four gaping cannon, and beyond them, in the torch-light, Lord
Howard himself, keeping watch with the guard: neither force nor skill
could make a way into the city by London Bridge.
The course which he should follow was determined for him. The
lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, a soldier and a Catholic,
had looked over the water with angry eyes at the insurgents collected
within reach of his guns, and had asked the queen for permission to
fire upon them. The queen, afraid of provoking the people, had
hitherto refused; on the Monday, however, a Tower boat, passing the
Southwark side of the water, was hailed by Wyatt's sentries; the
watermen refused to stop, the sentries fired, and one of the men in
the boat was killed. The next morning (February 6) (whether permission
had been given at last, or not, was never known), the guns on the
White Tower, the Devil's Tower, and all the bastions, were loaded and
aimed, and notice was sent over that the fire was about to open. The
inhabitants addressed themselves, in agitation, to Wyatt; and Wyatt,
with a sudden resolution, half felt to be desperate, resolved to march
for Kingston Bridge, cross the Thames, and come back on London. His
friends in the city promised to receive him, could he reach Ludgate by
daybreak on Wednesday.
On Tuesday morning, therefore, Shrove Tuesday, which the queen had
hoped to spend more happily than in facing an army of insurgents,
Wyatt, accompanied by not more than fifteen hundred men, pushed out of
Southwark. He had cannon with {p.105} him, which delayed his march,
but at four in the afternoon he reached Kingston. Thirty feet of the
bridge were broken away, and a guard of three hundred men were on the
other side; but the guard fled after a few rounds from the guns, and
Wyatt, leaving his men to refresh themselves in the town, went to work
to repair the passage. A row of barges lay on the opposite bank; three
sailors swam across, attached ropes to them, and towed them over; and,
the barges being moored where the bridge was broken, beams and planks
were laid across them, and a road was made of sufficient strength to
bear the cannon and the waggons.
By eleven o'clock at night the river was crossed, and the march was
resumed. The weather was still wild, the roads miry and heavy, and
through the winter night the motley party plunged along. The Rochester
men had, most of them, gone home, and those who remained were the
London deserters, gentlemen who had compromised themselves too deeply
to hope for pardon, or fanatics, who believed they were fighting the
Lord's battle, and some of the Protestant clergy. Ponet, the late
Bishop of Winchester, was with them; William Thomas, the late clerk of
the council; Sir George Harper, Anthony Knyvet, Lord Cobham's sons,
Pelham, who had been a spy of Northumberland's on the continent,[239]
and others more or less conspicuous in the worst period of the late
reign.
[Footnote 239: The Regent Mary to the Ambassadors
in England: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv.]
From the day that Wyatt came to Southwark the whole guard had been
under arms at Whitehall, and a number of them, to the agitation of the
court ladies, were stationed in the queen's ante-chamber. But the
guard was composed of dangerous elements. Sir Humfrey Radcliff, the
lieutenant, was a "favourer of the gospel;"[240] and the "Hot
Gospeller" himself, on his recovery from his fever, had returned to
his duties.[241] No {p.106} additional precautions had been taken,
nor does it seem that, on Wyatt's departure, his movements were
watched. Kingston Bridge having been broken, his immediate approach
was certainly unlooked for; nor was it till past midnight that
information came to the palace that the passage had been forced, and
that the insurgents were coming directly back upon London. Between two
and three in the morning the queen was called from her bed. Gardiner,
who had been, with others of the council, arguing with her in favour
of Courtenay the preceding day, was in waiting; he told her that her
barge was at the stairs to carry her up the river, and she must take
shelter instantly at Windsor.
[Footnote 240: Underhill's _Narrative_.]
[Footnote 241: Underhill, however, was too
notorious a person to be allowed to remain on duty
at such a time of danger.
"When Wyatt was come to Southwark," he says, "the
pensioners were commanded to watch in armour that
night at the Court.... After supper, I put on my
armour, as the rest did, for we were appointed to
watch all the night. So, being all armed, we came
up into the chamber of presence with our pole-axes
in our hands, wherewith the ladies were very
fearful. Some lamenting, crying, and wringing their
hands, said, Alas! there is some great mischief
toward: we shall all be destroyed this night. What
a sight is this, to see the Queen's chamber full of
armed men: the like was never seen nor heard of!
Mr. Norris, chief usher of Queen Mary's privy
chamber, was appointed to call the watch to see if
any were lacking; unto whom, Moore, the clerk of
our check, delivered the book of our names; and
when he came to my name, What, said he, what doth
he here? Sir, said the clerk, he is here ready to
serve as the rest be. Nay, by God's body, said he,
that heretic shall not watch here. Give me a pen.
So he struck my name out of the book."]
Without disturbing herself, the queen sent for Renard. Shall I go or
stay? she asked.
Unless your majesty desire to throw away your crown, Renard answered,
you will remain here till the last extremity; your flight will be
known, the city will rise, seize the Tower, and release the prisoners;
the heretics will massacre the priests, and Elizabeth will be
proclaimed queen.
The lords were divided. Gardiner insisted again that she must and
should go. The others were uncertain, or inclined to the opinion of
Renard. At last Mary said that she would be guided by Pembroke and
Clinton. If those two would undertake to stand by her, she would
remain and see out the struggle.[242]
[Footnote 242: Renard to Charles V., February 8:
_Rolls House MSS._]
They were not present, and were sent for on the spot. Pembroke for
weeks past had certainly wavered; Lord Thomas Grey believed at one
time that he had gained him over, and to the last felt assured of his
neutrality. Happily for Mary, happily, it must be said, for
England--for the Reformation was not a cause to be won by such
enterprises as that of Sir Thomas Wyatt--he decided on supporting the
queen, and promised to defend her with his life. At four o'clock in
the morning drums went round the city, calling the train-bands to an
instant muster at Charing Cross. Pembroke's conduct determined the
young lords and gentlemen about the court, who with their servants
were swiftly mounted and under arms; and by eight, more than ten
thousand men were stationed along the ground, then an open field,
which slopes from Piccadilly to Pall Mall. The road or causeway on
which Wyatt was expected to advance ran nearly {p.107} on the site
of Piccadilly itself. An old cross stood near the head of St. James's
Street, where guns were placed; and that no awkward accident like that
at Rochester might happen on the first collision, the gentlemen, who
formed four squadrons of horse, were pushed forwards towards Hyde Park
Corner.
Wyatt, who ought to have been at the gate of the city two hours
before, had been delayed in the meantime by the breaking down of a gun
in the heavy road at Brentford. Brett, the captain of the city
deserters, Ponet, Harper, and others, urged Wyatt to leave the gun
where it lay and keep his appointment. Wyatt, however, insisted on
waiting till the carriage could be repaired, although in the eyes of
every one but himself the delay was obvious ruin. Harper, seeing him
obstinate, stole away a second time to gain favour for himself by
carrying news to the court. Ponet, unambitious of martyrdom, told him
he would pray God for his success, and, advising Brett to shift for
himself, made away with others towards the sea and Germany.[243] It
was nine o'clock before Wyatt brought the draggled remnant of his
force, wet, hungry, and faint with their night march, up the hill from
Knightsbridge. Near Hyde Park Corner a lane turned off; and here
Pembroke had placed a troop of cavalry. The insurgents straggled on
without order. When half of them had passed, the horse dashed out, and
cut them in two, and all who were behind were dispersed or captured.
Wyatt, caring now only to press forward, kept his immediate followers
together, and went straight on. The queen's guns opened, and killed
three of his men; but, lowering his head, he dashed at them and over
them; then, turning to the right, to avoid the train-bands, he struck
down towards St. James's, where his party again separated. Knyvet and
the young Cobhams, leaving St. James's to their left, crossed the park
to Westminster. Wyatt went right along the present Pall Mall, past the
line of the citizens. They had but to move a few steps to intercept
his passage, close in, and take him; but not a man advanced, not a
hand was lifted; where the way was narrow they drew aside to let him
pass. At Charing Cross Sir John Gage was stationed, with part of the
guard, some horse, and among them, Courtenay, who in the morning had
been heard to say he would not obey orders; he was as good a man as
Pembroke. As Wyatt came up Courtenay turned his horse towards
Whitehall, and began to move off, followed by Lord Worcester. "Fie! my
lord," Sir Thomas {p.108} Cornwallis cried to him, "is this the
action of a gentleman?"[244] But deaf, or heedless, or treacherous, he
galloped off, calling Lost, lost! all is lost! and carried panic to
the court. The guard had broken at his flight, and came hurrying
behind him. Some cried that Pembroke had played false. Shouts of
treason rung through the palace. The queen, who had been watching from
the palace gallery, alone retained her presence of mind. If others
durst not stand the trial against the traitors, she said, she herself
would go out into the field and try the quarrel, and die with those
that would serve her.[245]
[Footnote 243: Letter of William Markham: _Tanner
MSS._ Bodleian Library. Compare Stow.]
[Footnote 244: Renard to Charles V., February 8:
_Rolls House MSS._]
[Footnote 245: Holinshed.]
At this moment Knyvet and the Cobhams, who had gone round by the old
palace, came by the gates as the fugitive guard were struggling in.
Infinite confusion followed. Gage was rolled in the dirt, and three of
the judges with him. The guard shrunk away into the offices and
kitchens to hide themselves. But Knyvet's men made no attempt to
enter. They contented themselves with shooting a few arrows, and then
hurried on to Charing Cross to rejoin Wyatt. At Charing Cross,
however, their way was now closed by a company of archers, who had
been sent back by Pembroke to protect the court. Sharp fighting
followed, and the cries rose so loud as to be heard on the leads of
the White Tower. At last the leaders forced their way up the Strand;
the rest of the party were cut up, dispersed, or taken.[246]
[Footnote 246: The dress of the Londoners who came
with Wyatt being the city uniform, they were
distinguished by the dirt upon their legs from
their night march. The cry of Pembroke's men in the
fight was "Down with the daggle-tails!"]
Wyatt himself, meanwhile, followed by three hundred men, had hurried
on through lines of men who still opened to give him passage. He
passed Temple Bar, along Fleet Street, and reached Ludgate. The gate
was open as he approached, when some one seeing a number of men coming
up, exclaimed, "These be Wyatt's antients." Muttered curses were heard
among the bystanders; but Lord Howard was on the spot; the gates,
notwithstanding the murmurs, were instantly closed; and, when Wyatt
knocked, Howard's voice answered, "Avaunt! traitor; thou shalt not
come in here." "I have kept touch," Wyatt exclaimed; but his
enterprise was hopeless now. He sat down upon a bench outside the
Belle Sauvage Yard. His followers scattered from him among the
by-lanes and streets; and, of the three hundred, twenty-four alone
remained, among {p.109} whom were now Knyvet and one of the young
Cobhams. With these few he turned at last, in the forlorn hope that
the train-bands would again open to let him pass. Some of Pembroke's
horse were coming up. He fought his way through them to Temple Bar,
where a herald cried, "Sir, ye were best to yield; the day is gone
against you; perchance ye may find the queen merciful." Sir Maurice
Berkeley was standing near him on horseback, to whom, feeling that
further resistance was useless, he surrendered his sword; and
Berkeley, to save him from being cut down in the tumult, took him up
upon his horse. Others in the same way took up Knyvet and Cobham,
Brett and two more. The six prisoners were carried through the Strand
back to Westminster, the passage through the city being thought
dangerous; and from Whitehall Stairs, Mary herself looking on from a
window of the palace, they were borne off in a barge to the Tower.
The queen had triumphed, triumphed through her own resolution, and
would now enjoy the fruits of victory.
Had Wyatt succeeded, Mary would have lost her husband and her crown;
and had the question been no more than a personal one, England could
have well dispensed both with her and Philip. But Elizabeth would have
ascended a throne under the shadow of treason. The Protestants would
have come back to power in the thoughtless vindictiveness of
exasperated and successful revolutionists; and the problem of the
Reformation would have been more hard than ever of a reasonable
solution. The fanatics had made their effort, and they had failed;
they had shaken the throne, but they had not overthrown it; the
queen's turn was come, and, as the danger had been great, so was the
resentment. She had Renard at one ear protesting that, while these
turbulent spirits were uncrushed, the precious person of the prince
could not be trusted to her. She had Gardiner, who, always pitiless
towards heretics, was savage at the frustration of his own schemes.
Renard in the closet, Gardiner in the pulpit, alike told her that she
must show no more mercy.[247] On Ash Wednesday evening, after Wyatt's
{p.110} surrender, a proclamation forbade all persons to shelter the
fugitive insurgents under pain of death. The "poor caitiffs" were
brought out of the houses where they had hidden themselves, and were
given up by hundreds. Huntingdon came in on Saturday with Suffolk and
his brothers. Sir James Crofts, Sir Henry Isly, and Sir Gawen Carew
followed. The common prisons overflowed into the churches, where
crowds of wretches were huddled together till the gibbets were ready
for their hanging; the Tower wards were so full that Cranmer, Ridley,
and Latimer were packed into a single cell; and all the living
representatives of the families of Grey and Dudley, except two young
girls, were now within the Tower walls, sentenced, or soon to be
sentenced, to death.
[Footnote 247: "On Sunday, the 11th of February,
the Bishop of Winchester preached in the chapel
before the queen." "The preachers for the seven
years last past, he said, by dividing of words and
other their own additions, had brought in many
errours detestable unto the Church of Christ." "He
axed a boon of the Queen's Highness, that, like as
she had beforetime extended her mercy particularly
and privately, [and] so through her lenity and
gentleness much conspiracy and open rebellion was
grown ... she would now be merciful to the body of
the commonwealth and conservation thereof, which
could not be unless the rotten and hurtful members
thereof were cut off and consumed."--_Chronicle of
Queen Mary_, p. 54.]
The queen's blood is up at last, Renard wrote exultingly to the
emperor on the 8th of February;[248] "the Duke of Suffolk, Lord Thomas
Grey, and Sir James Crofts have written to ask for mercy, but they
will find none; their heads will fall, and so will Courtenay's and
Elizabeth's. I have told the queen that she must be especially prompt
with these two. We have nothing now to hope for except that France
will break the peace, and then all will be well." On the 12th of
February the ambassador was still better satisfied. Elizabeth had been
sent for, and was on her way to London. A rupture with France seemed
inevitable, and as to clemency, there was no danger of it. "The
queen," he said, "had told him that Anne of Cleves was implicated;"
but for himself he was sure that the two centres of all past and all
possible conspiracies were Elizabeth and Courtenay, and that when
their heads, and the heads of the Greys, were once off their
shoulders, she would have nothing more to fear. The prisoners were
heretics to a man; she had a fair plea to despatch them, and she would
then settle the country as she pleased;[249] "The house of Suffolk
would soon be extinct."
[Footnote 248: _Rolls House MSS._]
[Footnote 249: Renard to Charles V., February 12:
_Rolls House MSS._]
The house of Suffolk would be extinct: that too, or almost that, had
been decided on. Jane Grey was guiltless of this last commotion; her
name had not been so much as mentioned among the insurgents; but she
was guilty of having been once called queen, and Mary, who before had
been generously deaf to the emperor's advice, and to Renard's
arguments, yielded in her present humour. Philip was beckoning in the
distance; and while Jane Grey lived, Philip, she was again and again
assured, must remain for ever separated from her arms.
{p.111} Jane Grey, therefore, was to die--her execution was resolved
upon the day after the victory; and the first intention was to put her
to death on the Friday immediately approaching. In killing her body,
however, Mary desired to have mercy on her soul; and she sent the
message of death (February 9) by the excellent Feckenham, afterwards
Abbot of Westminster, who was to bring her, if possible, to obedience
to the Catholic faith.
Feckenham, a man full of gentle and tender humanity, felt to the
bottom of his soul the errand on which he was despatched. He felt as a
Catholic priest--but he felt also as a man.
On admission to Lady Jane's room he told her that she was to die the
next morning, and he told her, also, for what reason the queen had
selected him to communicate the sentence.
She listened calmly. The time was short, she said; too short to be
spent in theological discussion; which, if Feckenham would permit, she
would decline.
Believing, or imagining that he ought to believe, that, if she died
unreconciled, she was lost, Feckenham hurried back to the queen to beg
for delay; and the queen, moved with his entreaties, respited the
execution till Monday, giving him three more days to pursue his
labour. But Lady Jane, when he returned to her, scarcely appreciated
the favour; she had not expected her words to be repeated, she said;
she had given up all thoughts of the world, and she would take her
death patiently whenever her majesty desired.[250]
[Footnote 250: Baoardo. The writer of the
_Chronicle of Queen Mary_, says, "She was appointed
to have been put to death on Friday, but was
stayed--for what cause is not known." Baoardo
supplies the explanation.]
Feckenham, however, still pressed his services, and courtesy to a kind
and anxious old man forbade her to refuse them. He remained with her
to the end; and certain arguments followed on faith and justification,
and the nature of sacraments; a record of which may be read by the
curious in Foxe.[251] Lady Jane was wearied without being convinced.
The tedium of the discussion was relieved, perhaps, by the now more
interesting account which she gave to her unsuccessful confessor of
the misfortune which was bringing her to her death.[252] The night
before she suffered she wrote a few sentences of advice to her sister
on the blank leaf of a New Testament. To her father, knowing his
weakness, and knowing, too, how he would be worked upon to imitate the
recantation of Northumberland, {p.112} she sent a letter of
exquisite beauty, in which the exhortations of a dying saint are
tempered with the reverence of a daughter for her father.[253]
[Footnote 251: Vol. vi. pp. 415-417.]
[Footnote 252: The story told by Baoardo, to whom,
it would seem, Feckenham related it.]
[Footnote 253: Foxe, vol. vi.]
The iron-hearted Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, had been
softened by the charms of his prisoner, and begged for some memorial
of her in writing. She wrote in a manual of English prayers the
following words:--
"Forasmuch as you have desired so simple a woman to write in so worthy
a book, good Master Lieutenant, therefore I shall, as a friend, desire
you, and as a Christian, require you, to call upon God to incline your
heart to his laws, to quicken you in his way, and not to take the word
of truth utterly out of your mouth. Live still to die, that by death
you may purchase eternal life, and remember how Methuselah, who, as we
read in the Scriptures, was the longest liver that was of a man, died
at the last; for, as the Preacher saith, there is a time to be born
and a time to die; and the day of death is better than the day of our
birth. Yours, as the Lord knoweth, as a friend, Jane Dudley."[254]
[Footnote 254: _Chronicle of Queen Mary_, p. 57,
note. In the same manual are a few words in
Guilford Dudley's hand, addressed to Suffolk, and a
few words also addressed to Suffolk by Lady Jane.
Mr. Nichols supposes that the book (it is still
extant among the _Harleian MSS._) was used as a
means of communicating with the duke when direct
intercourse was unpermitted. If this conjecture is
right, Lady Jane's letter, perhaps, never reached
her father at all. There is some difficulty about
the memorial which the Lieutenant of the Tower
obtained from her. Baoardo says, that she gave him
a book, in which she had written a few words in
Greek, Latin, and English.
"La Greca era tale. La morte dara la pena al mio
corpo del fallo ma la mia anima giustificara inanzi
al conspetto di Dio la innocenza mia.
"La Latina diceva. Se la giustitia ha luogo nel
corpo mio l'anima mia l'havera nella misericordia
di Dio.
"La Inglese. Il fallo e degno di morte ma il modo
della mia ignoranza doueva meritar pieta e
excusatione appresso il mondo e alle leggi."]
Her husband was also to die, and to die before her. The morning on
which they were to suffer he begged for a last interview and a last
embrace. It was left to herself to consent or refuse. If, she replied,
the meeting would benefit either of their souls, she would see him
with pleasure; but, in her own opinion, it would only increase their
trial. They would meet soon enough in the other world.
He died, therefore, without seeing her again. She saw him once alive
as he was led to the scaffold, and again as he returned a mutilated
corpse in the death-cart. It was not wilful cruelty. The officer in
command had forgotten that the ordinary road led past her window. But
the delicate girl of seventeen was as {p.113} masculine in her heart
as in her intellect. When her own turn arrived, Sir John Brydges led
her down to the green; her attendants were in an agony of tears, but
her own eyes were dry. She prayed quietly till she reached the foot of
the scaffold, when she turned to Feckenham, who still clung to her
side. "Go now," she said; "God grant you all your desires, and accept
my own warm thanks for your attentions to me; although, indeed, those
attentions have tried me more than death can now terrify me."[255] She
sprung up the steps, and said briefly that she had broken the law in
accepting the crown; but as to any guilt of intention, she wrung her
hands, and said she washed them clean of it in innocency before God
and man. She entreated her hearers to bear her witness that she died a
true Christian woman; that she looked to be saved only by the mercy of
God and the merits of his Son: and she begged for their prayers as
long as she was alive. Feckenham had still followed her,
notwithstanding his dismissal. "Shall I say the _Miserere_ psalm?" she
said to him.[256] When it was done, she let down her hair with her
attendants' help, and uncovered her neck. The rest may be told in the
words of the chronicler:--
[Footnote 255: Andate: che nostro Signore Dio vi
contenti d'ogni vostro desiderio, e siate sempre
infinitamente ringratiato della compagnia che
m'havete fatta avenga che da quella sia stata molto
piu noiata che hora non mi spaventa la
morte.--Baoardo.]
[Footnote 256: The 51st: "Have mercy on me, oh
Lord, after thy goodness."]
"The hangman kneeled down and asked her forgiveness, whom she forgave
most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the straw, which
doing, she saw the block. Then she said, I pray you despatch me
quickly. Then she kneeled down, saying, Will you take it off before I
lay me down? and the hangman answered No, Madam. She tied a kerchief
about her eyes; then, feeling for the block, she said, What shall I
do; where is it? One of the bystanders guiding her thereunto, she laid
her head down upon the block, and stretched forth her body, and said,
Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And so ended."[257]
[Footnote 257: _Chronicle of Queen Mary_, pp. 58,
59.]