_Ashridge_
When Queen Mary was persuaded, falsely, that her throne could be made
safe only by the death of her sister, then but eighteen years old, the
Princess Elizabeth lay sick at Ashridge. One spring morning, as she
tossed abed, ’twixt sleeping and waking, in the weariness of fever, she
heard in the courtyard beneath her window the tramp of men, the clatter
of horses’ hoofs. Her affrighted servants brought her word that a guard
of two hundred and fifty horsemen attended the Lords, who came with
messages from the Queen, a guard larger than enough to keep watch over
so frail a Princess. The house being thus begirt, Lord Thame and his
companions, thrust their way into the presence of the Princess. To her
demand that if not for courtesy, yet for modesty’s sake, they should put
off the delivery of their message till the morrow, they answered that
their commission was to bring her to London, alive or dead.
“A sore commission,” said the Princess, but a commission not to be
gainsaid. And the Queen’s doctors showed her little pity. She might be
removed, said they, not without danger, yet without death.
So on the morrow, the sad cavalcade set forth. The Princess, that she
might be the more darkly shielded from the public gaze, was borne in the
Queen’s own litter, which she presently bade to be opened, and thus she
made her progress to Whitehall in the full view of the people. It was a
tedious and a painful journey. From Ashridge, by St. Alban’s, she came
to South Mymms, where again she rested her weary body, and not until
four suns had set did she reach the inhospitable Court of Mary, her
Queen and her sister.
_Whitehall_
When she came to Whitehall, she was still a prisoner. It was as though
she carried her dungeon with her. Whitehall was less kind even than the
white high road, where at least she had found solace in the pity of the
humble folk, who wept as she passed, and offered prayers for her safety.
Fourteen days she spent in unfriended seclusion, with “no comfort but
her innocence, no companion but her book.” Not for her the freedom of
the open air, the chatter of tongues, the laughter of friends. Her
oft-repeated request to see her sister fell upon the deaf ears of her
jailers. A princess of less courage would have quailed before the
ill-omened silence which enwrapped her. And how could she hope to regain
the Queen’s affection, so long as the cunning servants of the Emperor
and the King of France, Renard and Noailles, were there to distil the
poison of hate and dread in Queen Mary’s ear?
Knowing well that her foes were the Queen’s friends, her friends the
Queen’s foes, she was still of a stout heart. When Gardiner, the Bishop
of Winchester, resolute to entrap her, urged her to confess and to
submit herself to the Queen’s Majesty, “submission,” said she proudly,
“confessed a crime, and pardon belonged to a delinquent.” For her part
she had no crime to confess, and she asked no pardon. So for her
temerity she was told that two hundred Northern Whitecoats should guard
her lodging that night, and that in the morn she should be secretly
conveyed to the Tower, without her household, there to be kept a close
prisoner.
_The Tower_
It was a Palm Sunday when she set forth, under a guard, to that place of
ill-omen, the Tower of London. Hers was no triumphal progress; neither
palm nor willow was carried in her honour. And well might she dread the
journey, which she was forced to make. Within the dark walls of the
Tower her mother had laid her fair head down upon the block; and what
cause had she to hope for a happier destiny? As she left Whitehall, to
her a place of durance, she looked up to the window of the Queen’s
bedchamber, hoping there to see some mark of favour, some signal of
affection. The hope was vain, and in cold despair she came to the
Stairs, where the barges awaited her. When she reached the Tower, she
was bidden to enter at the Traitor’s Gate, which at first she refused,
and then stepping short so that her foot fell into the water, she spake
these words to her obdurate jailer:
“Here landeth as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed at these
stairs, since Julius Cæsar laid the first foundations of the Tower.”
The Constable, a wry-faced ruffian, lurched forth savagely to receive
her, and in a harsh voice told her that he would show her her lodging.
Then she, being faint, “sat down,” we are told, “upon a fair stone, at
which time there fell a great shower of rain: the heavens themselves did
seem to weep at such inhuman usage.”
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