1553
Turn of the tide--Reaction in Mary’s favour in the Council--Suffolk
yields--Mary proclaimed in London--Lady Jane’s deposition--She
returns to Sion House.
Northumberland was gone. The weight of his dominant influence was
removed, and many of his colleagues must have breathed more freely.
In the Tower Lady Jane, with those of the Council left in London,
continued to watch and wait the course of events. It must have been
recognised that the future was dark and uncertain; and whilst the lords
and nobles looked about for a way of escape should affairs go ill
with the new government, the boy and girl arbitrarily linked together
may have been drawn closer by the growing sense of a common danger.
Guilford Dudley did not share his father’s unpopularity. Young and
handsome, he is said to have been endowed with virtues calling forth an
unusual amount of pity for his premature end,[169] and Heylyn declared
that of all Dudley’s brood he had nothing of his father in him.[170]
“He was,” says Fuller, adding his testimony, “a goodly and (for aught
I find to the contrary) a godly gentleman, whose worst fault was that
he was son to an ambitious father.”[171] The flash of boyish ambition
he had evinced in his determination to be content with nothing less
than kingship must have been soon extinguished by the consciousness
that life itself was at stake.
For quicker and quicker came tidings of fresh triumphs for Mary, each
one striking at the hopes of her rival’s partisans. News was brought
that Mary had been proclaimed Queen first in Buckinghamshire; next at
Norwich. Her forces were gathering strength, her adherents gaining
courage. Again, six vessels placed at Yarmouth to intercept her flight,
should she attempt it, were won over to her side, their captains, with
men and ordnance, making submission; whereat “the Lady Mary”--from
whose mind nothing had been further than flight--“and her company were
wonderful joyous.”
This last blow hit the party acknowledging Jane as Queen hard; nor were
its effects long in becoming visible. In the Tower “each man began to
pluck in his horns,” and to cast about for a manner of dissevering his
private fortunes from a cause manifestly doomed to disaster. Pembroke,
who in May had associated himself with Northumberland by marrying
his son to Katherine Grey, was one of the foremost in considering
the possibility of quitting the Tower, so that he might hold
consultation with those without; but as yet he had not devised a means
of accomplishing his purpose. Each day brought its developments within
the walls of the fortress, and beyond them. On the Sunday night--not
a week after the crown had been fitted on Jane’s head--when the Lord
Treasurer, then officiously desirous of adding a second for her
husband, was leaving the building in order to repair to his own house,
the gates were suddenly shut and the keys carried up to the mistress of
the Tower. What was the reason? No one knew, but it was whispered that
a seal had been found missing. Others said that she had feared some
packinge [_sic_] in the Treasurer. The days were coming when it would
be in no one’s power to keep the Lords of the Council at their post
under lock and key.
That Sunday morning--it was July 16--Ridley had preached at Paul’s
Cross before the Mayor, Aldermen, and people, pleading Lady Jane’s
cause with all the eloquence at his command. Let his hearers, he said,
contrast her piety and gentleness with the haughtiness and papistry
of her rival. And he told the story of his visit to Hunsdon, of his
attempt to convince Mary of her errors, and of its failure, conjuring
all who heard him to maintain the cause of Queen Jane and of the
Gospel. But his exhortations fell on deaf ears.
And still one messenger of ill tidings followed hard upon the heels of
another. Cecil, with his natural aptitude for intrigue, was engaging
in secret deliberations with members of the Council inclined to be
favourable to Mary, finding in especial the Lord Treasurer, Winchester,
the Earl of Arundel, and Lord Darcy, willing listeners, “whereof I
did immediately tell Mr. Petre”--the other Secretary--“for both our
comfort.”[172] Presently a pretext was invented to cover the escape
of the lords from the Tower. It was said that Northumberland had sent
for auxiliaries, and that it was necessary to hold a consultation with
the foreign ambassadors as to the employment of mercenaries.[173]
The meeting was to take place at Baynard’s Castle, Arundel observing
significantly that he liked not the air of the Tower. He and his
friends may indeed have reflected that it had proved fatal to many less
steeped in treason than they. To Baynard’s Castle some of the lords
accordingly repaired, sending afterwards to summon the rest to join
them, with the exception of Suffolk, who remained behind, in apparent
ignorance of what was going forward.
In the consultation, held on July 19, the deathblow was dealt to the
hopes of those faithful to the nine-days’ Queen. Arundel was the first
to declare himself unhesitatingly on Mary’s side, and to denounce the
Duke, from whom he had so lately parted on terms of devoted friendship.
He boasted of his courage in now opposing Northumberland--a man of
supreme authority, and--as one who had little or no conscience--fond
of blood. It was by no desire of vengeance that Arundel’s conduct was
prompted, he declared, but by conscience and anxiety for the public
welfare; the Duke was actuated by a desire neither for the good of the
kingdom nor by religious zeal, but purely by a desire for power, and he
proceeded to hold him up to the reprobation of his colleagues.
Pembroke made answer, promising, with his hand on his sword, to make
Mary Queen. There were indeed few dissentient voices, and, though
some of the lords at first maintained that warning should be sent to
Northumberland and a general pardon obtained from Mary, their proposals
did not meet with favour, and they did not press them.
A hundred men had been despatched on various pretexts, and by degrees,
to the Tower, with orders to make themselves masters of the place,
in case Suffolk would not leave it except upon compulsion; but the
Duke was not a man to lead a forlorn hope. Had Northumberland been at
hand a struggle might have taken place; as it was, not a voice was
raised against the decision of the Council, and with almost incredible
rapidity the face of affairs underwent a change, absolute and complete.
Suffolk, so soon as the determination of the lords was made known to
him, lost no time in expressing his willingness to concur in it and to
add his signature to the proclamation of Mary, already drawn up.[174]
He was, he said, but one man; and proclaiming his daughter’s rival in
person on Tower Hill, he finally struck his colours; going so far, as
some affirm, as to share in the demonstration in the new Queen’s honour
in Cheapside, where the proclamation was read by the Earl of Pembroke
amidst a scene of wild enthusiasm contrasting vividly with the coldness
and apathy shown by the populace when, nine days earlier, they had been
asked to accept the Duke of Northumberland’s daughter-in-law as their
Queen.
“For my time I never saw the like,” says a news-letter,[175] “and by
the report of others the like was never seen. The number of caps that
were thrown up at the proclamation were not to be told.... I saw myself
money was thrown out at windows for joy. The bonfires were without
number, and, what with shouting and crying of the people and ringing of
the bells, there could no one hear almost what another said, besides
banquetings and singing in the street for joy.”
Arundel was there, as well as Pembroke, with Shrewsbury and others, and
the day was ended with evensong at St. Paul’s.
And whilst all this was going on outside, in the gloom of the Tower,
where the air must have struck chill even on that July day, sat the
little victim of state-craft--“Cette pauvre reine,” wrote Noailles
to his master, “qui s’en peut dire de la féve”--a Twelfth Night’s
Queen--in the fortress that had seen her brief exaltation, and was so
soon to become to her a prison. As the joy-bells echoed through the
City and the shouting of the people penetrated the thick walls she must
have wondered what was the cause of rejoicing. Presently she learnt it.
That afternoon had been fixed for the christening of a child born
to Underhyll--nicknamed, on account of his religious zeal, the
Hot-Gospeller--on duty as a Gentleman Pensioner at the Tower. The baby
was highly favoured, since the Duke of Suffolk and the Earl of Pembroke
were to be his sponsors by proxy and Lady Jane had signified her
intention of acting as godmother, calling the infant Guilford, after
her husband.
Lady Throckmorton, wife to Sir Nicholas, in attendance on Jane,[176]
had been chosen to represent her mistress at the ceremony; and, on
quitting the Tower for that purpose, had waited on the Queen and
received her usual orders, according to royal etiquette. Upon her
return, the baptism over, she found all--like a transformation scene at
the theatre--changed. The canopy of state had been removed from Lady
Jane’s apartment, and Lady Jane herself, divested of her sovereignty,
was practically a prisoner.[177]
During the absence of the Lady-in-waiting, Suffolk, his part on
Cheapside played, had returned to the Tower, to set matters there on
their new footing. Informing his daughter, as one imagines with the
roughness of a man smarting under defeat, that since her cousin had
been elected Queen by the Council, and had been proclaimed, it was
time she should do her honour, he removed the insignia of royalty. The
rank she had possessed not being her own she must make a virtue of
necessity, and bow to that fortune of which she had been the sport and
victim.
Rising to the occasion, Jane, as might be expected, made fitting
reply. The words now spoken by her father were, she answered, more
becoming and praiseworthy than those he had uttered on putting her in
possession of the crown; proceeding to moralise the matter after a
fashion that can only be attributed to the imaginative faculties of
the narrator of the scene. This done she, more naturally, withdrew
into her private apartments with her mother and other ladies and gave
way, in spite of her firmness, to “infinite sorrow.”[178] A further
scene narrated by the Italian, Florio, on the authority of the Duke of
Suffolk’s chaplain--“as her father’s learned and pious preacher told
me”--represents her as confronted with some at least of the men who had
betrayed her, and as reproaching them bitterly with their duplicity.
Without vouching for the accuracy of the speech reported, touches are
discernible in it--evidences of a very human wrath, indignation, and
scorn--unlikely to have been invented by men whose habit it was to
describe the speaker as the living embodiment of meekness and patience,
and it may be that the evangelist’s account is founded on fact.
“Therefore, O Lords of the Council,” she is made to say, “there is
found in men of illustrious blood, and as much esteemed by the world
as you, double dealing, deceit, fickleness, and ruin to the innocent.
Which of you can boast with truth that I besought him to make me a
Queen? Where are the gifts I promised or gave on this account? Did ye
not of your own accord drag me from my literary studies, and, depriving
me of liberty, place me in this rank? Alas! double-faced men, how well
I see, though late, to what end ye set me in this royal dignity! How
will ye escape the infamy following upon such deeds?” How were broken
promises, violated oaths, to be coloured and disguised? Who would trust
them for the future? “But be of good cheer, with the same measure it
shall be meted to you again.”
With this prophecy of retribution to follow she ended. “For a good
space she was silent; and they departed, full of shame, leaving her
well guarded.”[179]
Her attendants were not long in availing themselves of the permission
accorded them to go where they pleased. The service of Lady Jane was,
from an honour, become a perilous duty; and they went to their own
homes, leaving their nine-days’ mistress “burdened with thought and
woe.” The following morning she too quitted the Tower, returning to
Sion House. It was no more than ten days since she had been brought
from it in royal state.