1553
Northumberland at bay--His capitulation--Meeting with Arundel, and
arrest--Lady Jane a prisoner--Mary and Elizabeth--Mary’s visit to
the Tower--London--Mary’s policy.
The unanimous capitulation of the Council, in which he was by absence
precluded from joining, sealed Northumberland’s fate. The centre of
interest shifts from London to the country, whither he had gone to meet
the forces gathering round Mary. The ragged bear was at bay.
Arundel and Paget had posted northwards on the night following the
revolution in London to inform the Queen of the proceedings of the
Council and to make their peace with the new sovereign; Paget’s success
in particular being so marked that the French looker-on reported that
his favour with the Queen “etait chose plaisante à voir et oir.” The
question all men were asking was what stand would be made by the leader
of the troops arrayed against her. That Northumberland, knowing that he
had sinned too deeply for forgiveness, would yield without a blow can
scarcely have been contemplated by the most sanguine of his opponents,
and the singular transmutation taking place in a man who hitherto,
whatever might have been his faults or crimes, had never been lacking
in courage, must have taken his enemies and what friends remained to
him by surprise.
“Bold, sensitive, and magnanimous,” as some one describes him,[180]
he was to display a lack of every manly quality only explicable on
the hypothesis that the incessant strain and excitement of the last
three weeks had told upon nerves and spirits to an extent making it
impossible for him to meet the crisis with dignity and valour.
Hampered with orders from the Council framed in Mary’s interest and
with the secret object of delaying his movements until her adherents
had had time to muster in force, he did not adopt the only course--that
of immediate attack--offering a possibility of success, and had
retreated to Cambridge when the news that Mary had been proclaimed in
London reached him. From that instant he abandoned the struggle.
On the previous day the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Doctor
Sandys, had preached, at his request, a sermon directed against Mary.
Now, Duke and churchman standing side by side in the market-place,
Northumberland, with the tears running down his face, and throwing
his cap into the air, proclaimed her Queen. She was a merciful woman,
he told Sandys, and all would doubtless share in her general pardon.
Sandys knew better, and bade the Duke not flatter himself with false
hopes. Were the Queen ever so much inclined to pardon, those who ruled
her would destroy Northumberland, whoever else were spared.
The churchman proved to have judged more accurately than the soldier.
An hour later the Duke received letters from the Council, indicating
the treatment he might expect at their hands. He was thereby bidden,
on pain of treason, to disarm, and it was added that, should he come
within ten miles of London, his late comrades would fight him. Could
greater loyalty and zeal in the service of the rising sun be displayed?
Fidelity was at a discount. His troops melted away, leaving their
captain at the mercy of his enemies. In the camp confusion prevailed.
Northumberland was first put under arrest, then set again at liberty
upon his protest, based upon the orders of the Council that “all men
should go his way.” Was he, the leader, to be prevented from acting
upon their command? Young Warwick, his son, was upon the point of
riding away, when, the morning after the scene in the market-place, the
Earl of Arundel arrived from Queen Mary with orders to arrest the Duke.
What ensued was a painful spectacle, Northumberland’s bearing, even in
a day when servility on the part of the fallen was so common as to be
almost a matter of course, being generally stigmatized as unworthy of
the man who had often given proof of a brave and noble spirit.[181] As
the two men met, it may be that the Duke augured well from the Queen’s
choice of a messenger. If he had, he was to be quickly undeceived.
Arundel was not disposed to risk his newly acquired favour with the
sovereign for the sake of a discredited comrade, and Northumberland
might have spared the abjectness of his attitude; as, falling on his
knees, he begged his former friend, for the love of God, to be good to
him.
“Consider,” he urged, “I have done nothing but by the consents of you
and all the whole Council.”
The plea was ill-chosen. That Arundel had been implicated in the
treason was a reason the more why he could not afford to show mercy
to a fellow-traitor; nor was he in a mood to discuss a past he would
have preferred to forget and to blot out. It is the unfortunate who
are prone to indulge in long memories, and the Earl had just achieved
a success which he was anxious to render permanent. Disregarding
Northumberland’s appeal, he turned at once to the practical matter in
hand. He had been sent there by the Queen’s Majesty, he told the Duke;
in her name he arrested him.
Northumberland made no attempt at resistance. He obeyed, he answered
humbly; “and I beseech you, my Lord of Arundel, use mercy towards me,
knowing the case as it is.”
Again Arundel coldly ignored the appeal to the past.
“My lord,” he replied, “ye should have sought for mercy sooner. I
must do according to my commandment,” and he handed over his prisoner
forthwith to the guards who stood near.
For two hours, denied so much as the services of his attendants, the
Duke paced the chamber wherein he was confined, till, looking out of
the window, he caught sight of Arundel passing below, and entreated
that his servants might be admitted to him.
“For the love of God,” he cried, “let me have Cox, one of my chamber,
to wait on me!”
“You shall have Tom, your boy,” answered the Earl, naming the
lad, Thomas Lovell, of whom, a few days earlier, he had taken so
affectionate a leave. Northumberland protested.
“Alas, my lord,” he said, “what stead can a boy do me? I pray you let
me have Cox.” And so both Lovell and Cox were permitted to attend their
master. It was the single concession he could obtain.[182]
Thus Northumberland met his fate.
The Queen’s justice had overtaken more innocent victims. Lady Jane’s
stay at Sion House had not been prolonged. By July 23, not more than
three days after she had quitted the Tower, she returned to it, not as
a Queen, but as a captive, accompanied by the Duchess of Northumberland
and Guilford Dudley, her husband. More prisoners were quickly added to
their number. Northumberland was brought, with others of his adherents,
from Cambridge. Northampton, who had hurried to Framlingham, where
Mary then was, to throw himself upon her mercy, arrived soon after;
with Bishop Ridley, who, notwithstanding his recent declamations
against the Queen, had resorted with the rest to Norfolk, had met with
an unfriendly reception from Mary, and was sent back to London “on a
halting horse.”[183]
It is singular that to the Duke of Suffolk, prominent amongst those who
had been arrayed against her, the new Queen showed unusual indulgence.
So far as actual deeds were concerned, he had been second in guilt
only to Northumberland; though there can be little doubt that he
was led and governed by the stronger will and more soaring ambition
of his confederate. Lady Jane being, besides, his daughter, and not
merely married to his son, it would have been natural to expect that
he would have been called to a stricter account than Dudley. He was,
as a matter of course, arrested and consigned to the Tower; but when
a convenient attack of illness laid him low--a news-letter reporting
that he was “in such case as no man judgeth he could live”[184]--and
his wife represented his desperate condition to her cousin the Queen,
adding that, if left in the Tower, death would ensue, Mary appears to
have made no difficulty in granting her his freedom, merely ordering
him to confine himself to his house, rather as restraint than as
chastisement.[185]
Mary could afford to show mercy. On August 3 she made her triumphal
entry into the capital which had proved so loyal to her cause, riding
on a white horse, with the Earl of Arundel bearing before her the sword
of state, and preceded by some thousand gentlemen in rich array.
Elizabeth was at her side--Elizabeth, who had learnt wisdom since
the days, nearly five years ago, when she had compromised herself
for the sake of Seymour. During the crisis now over, she had shown
both prudence and caution, playing in fact a waiting game, as she
looked on at the contest between her sister and Northumberland, and
carefully abstaining from taking any side in it, until it should be
seen which of the two would prove victorious. To her, as well as to
Mary, a summons had been sent as from her dying brother; more wary
than her sister, she detected the snare, and remained at Hatfield,
whilst Mary came near to falling a prey to her enemies. At Hatfield
she continued during the ensuing days, being visited by commissioners
from Northumberland, who offered a large price, in land and money, in
exchange for her acquiescence in Edward’s appointment of Lady Jane as
his successor. If Elizabeth loved money, she loved her safety more; and
returned an answer to the effect that it was with her elder sister that
an agreement must be made, since in Mary’s lifetime she herself had
neither claim nor title to the succession. Leti,[186] representing her
as regarding Lady Jane as a _jeune étourdie_--the first and only time
the epithet can have been applied to Suffolk’s grave daughter--states
that she indignantly expostulated with Northumberland upon the wrong
done to herself and Mary. She is more likely to have kept silence;
and it is certain that an opportune attack of illness afforded her an
excuse for prudent inaction. When Mary’s cause had become triumphant
she had recovered sufficiently to proceed to London, meeting her sister
on the following day at Aldgate, and riding at her side when she made
her entry into the capital.
[Illustration:
From a photo by Emery Walker after a painting attributed to F.
Zuccaro.
QUEEN ELIZABETH.]
The two presented a painful contrast: Mary prematurely aged by
grief and care, small and thin, “unlike in every respect to father
or mother,” says Michele, the Venetian ambassador, “with eyes so
piercing as to inspire not only reverence, but fear”; Elizabeth, now
twenty, tall and well made, though possessing more grace than beauty,
with fine eyes, and, above all, beautiful hands, “della quale fa
professione”--which she was accustomed to display.
Her entry into the City made, Mary proceeded, according to ancient
custom, and as her unwilling rival had done three weeks before, to
the Tower, where a striking scene took place. On her entrance she
was met by a group of those who, imprisoned during the two previous
reigns, awaited her on their knees. Her kinsman, Edward Courtenay,
was there--since he was ten years old he had known no other home--and
the Duchess of Somerset, widow of the Protector, with the old Duke of
Norfolk, father to Surrey, Tunstall, the deprived Bishop of Durham,
and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. In Mary’s eyes some of these were
martyrs, suffering for their fidelity to the faith for which she had
herself been prepared to go to the scaffold; for others she felt the
natural compassion due to captives who have wasted long years within
prison walls; and, touched and overcome by the sight of that motley
company, she burst into tears.
“These are my prisoners,” she said, as she bent and kissed them.
Their day was come. By August 11 Gardiner was reinstated in Winchester
House, which had been appropriated to the use of the Marquis of
Northampton, now perhaps inhabiting the Bishop’s quarters in the Tower.
The Duke of Norfolk, the Duchess of Somerset, Courtenay, were all at
liberty. Bonner was once more exercising his functions as Bishop
of London. But their places in the old prison-house were not left
vacant: fresh captives being sent to join those already there. Report
declared--prematurely--that sentence had been passed on Northumberland,
Huntingdon, Gates, and others. Pembroke, notwithstanding the zealous
share he had taken in proclaiming Mary Queen, as well as Winchester and
Darcy, were confined to their houses.
All necessary measures had been taken for the security of the
Government. It was time to think of the dead boy lying unburied
whilst the struggle for his inheritance had been fought out. In the
arrangements for her brother’s funeral Mary displayed a toleration
that must have gone far to raise the hopes of the Protestant party,
awaiting, in anxiety and dread, enlightenment as to the course the
new ruler would pursue with regard to religion. Permitting her
brother’s obsequies to be celebrated by Cranmer according to the ritual
prescribed by the reformed Prayer-book, she caused a Requiem Mass
to be sung for him in the Tower in the presence of some hundreds of
worshippers, notwithstanding the fact that, according to Griffet, “this
was not in conformity with the laws of the Roman Church, since the
Prince died in schism and heresy.”[187]
It was the moment when Mary, the recipient, as she told the French
ambassador, of more graces than any living Princess; the object of the
love and devotion of her subjects; her long years of misfortune ended;
her record unstained, should have died. But, unfortunately, five more
years of life remained to her.
The presage of coming trouble was not absent in the midst of the
general rejoicing, and the first notes of discord had already been
struck. Emboldened by the Requiem celebrated in the Tower, a priest
had taken courage, and had said Mass in the Church of St. Bartholomew
in the City. It was then seen how far the people were from being
unanimous in including in their devotion to the Queen toleration for
her religion. “This day,” reports a news-letter of August 11, “an old
priest said Mass at St. Bartholomew’s, but after that Mass was done,
the people would have pulled him to pieces.”[188] “When they saw him
go up to the altar,” says Griffet, “there was a great tumult, some
attempting to throw themselves upon him and strike him, others trying
to prevent this violence, so that there came near to being blood
shed.”[189]
Scenes of this nature, with the open declarations of the Protestants
that they would meet the re-establishment of the old worship with an
armed resistance, and that it would be necessary to pass over the
bodies of twenty thousand men before a single Mass should be quietly
said in London, were warnings of rocks ahead. That Mary recognised
the gravity of the situation was proved by the fact that, after an
interview with the Mayor, she permitted the priest who had disregarded
the law to be put into prison, although taking care that an opportunity
of escape should shortly be afforded him.[190]
A proclamation made in the middle of August also testified to some
desire upon the Queen’s part, at this stage, to adopt a policy of
conciliation. In it she declared that it was her will “that all men
should embrace that religion which all men knew she had of long time
observed, and meant, God willing, to continue the same; willing all men
to be quiet, and not call men the names of heretick and papist, but
each man to live after the religion he thought best until further order
were taken concerning the same.”[191]
Though the liberty granted was only provisional and temporary, there
was nothing in the proclamation to foreshadow the fires of Smithfield,
and it was calculated to allay any fears or forebodings disquieting the
minds of loyal subjects.