Chapter I: Queen Jane and Queen Mary (7)

{p.115} To give the lie to all such slanders, when she entered the city, the princess had the covering of her litter thrown back; she was dressed in white, her face was pale from her illness, but the expression was lofty, scornful, and magnificent.[263] Crowds followed her along the streets to Westminster. The queen, when she arrived at Whitehall, refused to see her; a suite of rooms was assigned for her confinement in a corner of the palace, from which there was no egress except by passing the guard, and there, with short attendance, she waited the result of Gardiner's investigations. Wyatt, by vague admissions, had already partially compromised her, and, on the strength of his words, and the discovery of the copy of her letter in the packet of Noailles, she would have gone direct to the Tower, had the lords permitted. The emperor urged instant and summary justice both on her and on Courtenay; the irritation, should irritation arise, could be allayed afterwards by an amnesty.[264] The lords, however, insisted obstinately on the forms of law, the necessity of witnesses, and of a trial; and Renard watched their unreasonable humours with angry misgivings. It was enough, he said, that the conspiracy was undertaken in Elizabeth's interests; if she escaped now, the queen would never be secure.[265] In fact, while Elizabeth lived, the prince could not venture among the wild English spirits, and Charles was determined that the marriage should not escape him.

[Footnote 263: "Pour desguyser le regret qu'elle
a," says Renard, unable to relinquish his first
conviction.]

[Footnote 264: Renard was instructed to exhort the
queen: "Que l'execution et chastoy de ceulx qui le
meritent se face tost; usant a l'endroit de Madame
Elizabeth et de Cortenay comme elle verra convenir
a sa seurete, pour apres user de clemence en
l'endroit de ceulx qu'il luy semblera, afin de tost
reassurer le surplus."--The Emperor to Renard:
_Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv. pp. 224, 225.]

[Footnote 265: Il est certain l'enterprinse estoit
en sa faveur. Et certes, sire, si pendant que
l'occasion s'adonne elle ne la punyt et Cortenay,
elle ne sera jamais asseuree.--Renard to Charles
V.: Tytler, vol. ii. p. 311.]

As soon as the rebellion was crushed, Egmont, attended by Count Horn, returned to complete his work. He brought with him the dispensations in regular form. He brought also a fresh and pressing entreaty that Elizabeth should be sacrificed. An opportunity had been placed in the queen's hand, which her duty to the church required that she should not neglect; and Egmont was directed to tell her that the emperor, in trusting his son in a country where his own power could not protect him, relied upon her honour not to neglect any step essential to his security.[266] Egmont gave his message. The unhappy queen {p.116} required no urging; she protested to Renard, that she could neither rest nor sleep, so ardent was her desire for the prince's safe arrival.[267] Courtenay, if necessary, she could kill; against him the proofs were complete; as to Elizabeth, she knew her guilt; the evidence was growing; and she would insist to the council that justice should be done.

[Footnote 266: Renard to the Emperor, March 8:
_Rolls House MSS._]

[Footnote 267: La quelle me respondit et afferme
qu'elle ne dort ny repose pour le soucy elle tient
de la seure venue de son Altesse.--Renard to the
Emperor: Tytler, vol. ii.]

About the marriage itself, the lords had by this time agreed to yield. Courtenay's pretensions could no longer be decently advanced, and Gardiner, abandoning a hopeless cause, and turning his attention to the restoration of the church, would consent to anything, if, on his side, he might emancipate the clergy from the control of the civil power, and re-establish persecution. Two factions, distinctly marked, were now growing in the council--the party of the statesmen, composed of Paget, Sussex, Arundel, Pembroke, Lord William Howard, the Marquis of Winchester, Sir Edward Hastings, and Cornwallis: the party of the church, composed of Gardiner, Petre, Rochester, Gage, Jerningham, and Bourne. Divided on all other questions, the rival parties agreed only no longer to oppose the coming of Philip. The wavering few had been decided by the presents and promises which Egmont brought with him from Charles. Pensions of two thousand crowns had been offered to, and were probably accepted by the Earls of Pembroke, Arundel, Derby, and Shrewsbury; pensions of a thousand crowns were given to Sussex, Darcy, Winchester, Rochester, Petre, and Cheyne; pensions of five hundred crowns to Southwell, Waldegrave, Inglefield, Wentworth, and Grey;[268] ten thousand crowns were distributed among the officers and gentlemen who had distinguished themselves against Wyatt. The pensions were large, but, as Renard observed, when Charles seemed to hesitate, several of the recipients were old, and would soon die; and, as to the rest, things in England were changing from day to day, and means of some kind would easily be found to put an early end to the payments.[269]

[Footnote 268: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv. p.
267.]

[Footnote 269: Renard to Charles V., March 8:
_Rolls House MSS._]

Unanimity having been thus secured, on the day of Egmont's arrival Renard demanded an audience of the lords, and in the queen's presence requested their opinion whether the condition of England allowed the completion of the contract. The life of the prince of Spain was of great importance to Europe; should {p.117} they believe in their hearts that he would be in danger, there was still time to close the negotiation. The rebellion having broken out and having failed, the lords replied that there was no longer any likelihood of open violence. Arundel hinted, again, that the prince must bring his own cook and butler with him;[270] but he had nothing else to fear, if he could escape the French cruisers.

[Footnote 270: Arundel nous dit qu'il convenoit que
son alteze amena ses cuyseniers, sommeliers du
cave, et autres officiers pour son bouche, que
quant aux autres luy y pourvoyeroit selon les
coustumes d'Angleterre.--Renard to Charles V.:
_Rolls House MSS._]

These assurances, combined with the queen's secret promises about Elizabeth, were held sufficient; and on the 6th of March, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the ambassadors were conducted by Pembroke into the presence chamber. The queen, kneeling before the sacrament, called it to witness that, in consenting to the alliance with the Prince of Spain, she was moved by no carnal concupiscence, but only by her zeal for the welfare of her realm and subjects; and then, rising up, with the bystanders all in tears, she gave her hand to Egmont as Philip's representative. The blessing was pronounced by Gardiner, and the proxy marriage was completed.[271] The prince was to be sent for without delay, and Southampton was chosen as the port at which he should disembark, "being in the country of the Bishop of Winchester," where the people were, for the most part, good Catholics.

[Footnote 271: Puis par la main de l'Evesque de
Winchester les promesses et paroles de praesenti,
furent dictes et prononcees intelligiblement par la
diet Egmont seul et la dicte Dame.--Ibid. Compare
Tytler, vol. ii. p. 327. The great value of Mr.
Tytler's work is diminished by the many omissions
which he has permitted himself to make in the
letters which he has edited.]

Parliament was expected to give its sanction without further difficulty; the opposition of the country having been neutralised by the same causes which had influenced the council. The queen, indeed, in going through the ceremony before consulting parliament, though she had broken the promise which she made in the Guildhall, had placed it beyond their power to raise difficulties; but other questions were likely to rise which would not be settled so easily. She herself was longing to show her gratitude to Providence by restoring the authority of the pope; and the pope intended, if possible, to recover his first-fruits and Peter's pence, and to maintain the law of the church which forbade the alienation of church property.[272] The English laity {p.118} were resolute on their side to keep hold of what they had got; and to set the subject at rest, and to prevent unpleasant discussions on points of theology, Paget, with his friends, desired that the session should last but a few days, and that two measures only should be brought forward; the first for the confirmation of the treaty of marriage, the second to reassert the validity of the titles under which the church estates were held by their present owners. If the queen consented to the last, her title of Head of the Church might be dropped informally, and allowed to fall into abeyance.[273]

[Footnote 272: Pole's first commission granted him
powers only "concordandi et transigendi cum
possessoribus bonorum ecclesiasticorum, (restitutis
prius si expedire videtur immobilibus per eos
indebite detentis,) super fructibus male perceptis
ac bonis mobilibus consumptis."--Commission granted
to Reginald Pole: Wilkins's _Concilia_, vol. iv.
Cardinal Morone, writing to Pole as late as June,
1554, said that the pope was still unable to
resolve on giving his sanction to the
alienation.--Burnet's _Collectanea_.]

[Footnote 273: Paget to Renard: Tytler, vol. ii.]

Gardiner, however, saw in the failure of the insurrection an opportunity of emancipating the church, and of extinguishing heresy with fire and sword.[274] He was preparing a bill to restore the ancient rigorous tyranny of the ecclesiastical courts; and by his own authority he directed that, in the writs for the parliament, the summons should be to meet at Oxford,[275] where the conservatism of the country would be released from the dread of the London citizens. The spirit which, thirteen years before, had passed the Six Articles Bill by acclamation, continued to smoulder in the slow minds of the country gentlemen, and was blazing freely among the lately persecuted priests. The Bishop of Winchester had arranged in his imagination a splendid melodrama. The session was to begin on the 2nd of April; and the ecclesiastical bill was to be the first to be passed. On the 8th of March, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were sent down to the University to be tried before a committee of Convocation which had already decided on its verdict; and the Fathers of the Reformation were either to recant or to suffer the flaming penalties of heresy in the presence of the legislature, as the first-fruits of a renovated church discipline.

[Footnote 274: Par feug et sang.--Renard to Charles
V., March 14: _Rolls House MSS._; partially printed
by Tytler.]

[Footnote 275: Ibid.]

Vainly Renard protested. In the fiery obstinacy of his determination, Gardiner was the incarnate expression of the fury of the ecclesiastical faction, smarting, as they were, under their long degradation, and under the irritating consciousness of those false oaths of submission which they had sworn to a power which they loathed. Once before, in the first reaction against Protestant excesses, the Bishop of Winchester had seen the Six {p.119} Articles Bill carried--but his prey had then been snatched from his grasp. Now, embittered by fresh oppression, he saw his party once more in a position to revenge their wrongs when there was no Henry any longer to stand between them and their enemies. He would take the tide at the flood, forge a weapon keener than the last, and establish the Inquisition.[276] Paget swore it should not be.[277] Charles V. himself, dreading a fresh interruption to the marriage, insisted that this extravagant fervour should be checked;[278] and the Bishop of Arras, the scourge of the Netherlands, interceded for moderation in England. But Gardiner and the clergy were not to be turned from the hope of their hearts by the private alarms of the Imperialists; and in the heart of the queen religious orthodoxy was Philip's solitary rival. Renard urged her to be prudent in religion and cruel to the political prisoners. Gardiner, though eager as Renard to kill Elizabeth, would buy the privilege of working his will upon the Protestants by sparing Courtenay and Courtenay's friends. Mary listened to the worst counsels of each, and her distempered humour settled into a confused ferocity. So unwholesome appeared the aspect of things in the middle of March that, notwithstanding the formal contract, Renard almost advised the emperor to relinquish the thought of committing his son among so wild a people.[279]

[Footnote 276: Establir forme d'Inquisition contre
les heretiques.--Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]

[Footnote 277: Ibid.]

[Footnote 278: La chaleur exhorbitante.--Charles V.
to Renard: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv. p. 229.]

[Footnote 279: Pour estre la plus part des Angloys
sans foy, sans loy, confuz en la religion, doubles,
inconstans, et de nature jaloux et abhorrissans
estrangiers.--_Rolls House MSS._]

As opposition to extreme measures was anticipated in the House of Lords, as well as among the Commons, it was important to strengthen the bench of bishops. The pope had granted permission without difficulty to fill the vacant sees; and on the 1st of April six new prelates were consecrated at St. Mary Overies, while Sir John Brydges and Sir John Williams of Thame were raised to the peerage.

The Protestants, it must be admitted, had exerted themselves to make Gardiner's work easy to him. On the 14th of March the wall of a house in Aldgate became suddenly vocal, and seventeen thousand persons were collected to hear a message from Heaven pronounced by an angel. When the people said "God save Queen Mary," the wall was silent; when they said "God save Queen Elizabeth," the wall said "Amen!" When {p.120} they asked, "What is the mass?" the wall said, "It is idolatry." As the nation was holding its peace, the stones, it seemed, were crying out against the reaction. But the angel, on examination, turned out to be a girl concealed behind the plaster. Shortly after, the inhabitants of Cheapside, on opening their shop windows in the morning, beheld on a gallows, among the bodies of the hanged insurgents, a cat in priestly robes, with crown shaven, the fore-paws tied over her head, and a piece of paper clipped round between them, representing the wafer.

More serious were the doings of a part of the late conspirators who had escaped to France. Peter Carew, when he left Weymouth, promised soon to return, and he was received at Paris with a cordiality that answered his warmest hopes. Determined, if possible, to prevent Philip from reaching England, the French had equipped every vessel which they possessed available for sea, and Carew was sent again to the coast of the Channel to tempt across into the French service all those who, like himself, were compromised in the conspiracy, or whose blood was hotter than their fathers'. Every day the queen was chafed with the news of desertions to their dangerous rendezvous. Young men of honourable families, Pickerings, Strangways's, Killegrews, Staffords, Stauntons, Tremaynes, Courtenays, slipped over the water, carrying with them hardy sailors from the western harbours. The French supplied them with arms, ships, and money; and fast-sailing, heavily-armed privateers, officered by these young adventurers in the cause of freedom, were cruising on their own account, plundering Flemish and Spanish ships, and swearing that the Prince of Spain should set no foot on English shores.[280]

[Footnote 280: The French and Calais correspondence
in the State Paper Office contains a vast number of
letters on this subject. The following extracts are
specimens:--

On the 24th of March Thomas Corry writes to Lord
Grey that "two hundred vessels be in readiness" in
the French harbours. "There is lately arrived at
Caen in Normandy Sir Peter Carew, Sir William
Pickering, Sir Edward Courtenay, John Courtenay,
Brian Fitzwilliam, and divers other English
gentlemen. It is thought Sir Peter Carew shall have
charge of the fleet. There be three ships of
Englishmen, which be already gone to sea with
Killegrew, which do report that they serve the king
to prevent the coming of the King of
Spain."--_Calais MSS._

On the 28th of March, Edgar Hormolden writes from
Guisnes to Sir John Bourne: "The number of Sir
Peter Carew's retinue increaseth in France by the
confluence of such English _qui potius alicujus
praeclari facinoris quam artis bonae famam quaerunt_;
and they be so entreated there as it cannot be
otherwise conjectured but that they practise with
France: insomuch I have heard credible intelligence
that the said Carew used this persuasion, of late,
to his companions: Are not we, said he, allianced
with Normandy; yea! what ancient house is either
there or in France, but we claim by them and they
by us? why should we not rather embrace their love
than submit ourselves to the servitude of
Spain?"--_Calais MSS._

April 17, Dr. Wotton writes in cypher from Paris to
the queen: "Yesterday, an Italian brought a letter
to my lodging, and delivered it to a servant of
mine, and went his way, so that I know not what he
is. The effect of his letter is, that for because
he taketh it to be the part of every good Christian
man to further your godly purpose and Catholic
doings, he hath thought good to advertise me that
those fugitives of England say to their friends
here that they have intelligence of great
importance in England with some of the chiefest on
the realm, which shall appear on the arrival of the
Prince of Spain. Within few days they go to
Normandy to embark themselves there, so strong,
that, if they do not let the Prince of Spain to
land, as they will attempt to do, yet they will not
fail, by the help of them that have intelligence
with them, to let him come to London."--_French
MSS._ bundle xi.]

{p.121} The queen indignantly demanded explanations of Noailles, and, through her ambassador at Paris, she required the French government to seize "her traitors," and deliver them to her. Noailles, alarmed, perhaps, for his own security, suggested that it might be well to conceal Carew, and to affect to make an attempt to arrest him. But Henry, at once more sagacious and more bold, replied to the ambassador that "he was not the queen's hangman:" "these men that you require," he said, "deny that they have conspired anything against the queen; marry, they say they will not be oppressed by mine enemy, and that is no just cause why I should owe them ill-will."[281] He desired Noailles, with quiet irony, to tell her majesty "that there was nothing in the existing treaties to forbid his accepting the services of English volunteers in the war with the emperor: her majesty might remember that he had invited her to make a new treaty, and that she had refused:" "he would act by the just letter of his obligations."[282]

[Footnote 281: Wotton to the Queen: _French MSS._
bundle xi. State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 282: Noailles to the King of France:
_Ambassades_, vol. iii.]

Would her subjects have permitted, the queen would have replied by a declaration of war. As it was, she could only relieve herself with indignant words.[283] But Carew and his friends might depend on support so long as they would make themselves {p.122} useful to France. Possessed of ships and arms, they were a constant menace to the Channel, and a constant temptation to the disaffected; and, growing bitter at last, and believing that Elizabeth's life was on the point of being sacrificed, they were prepared to support Henry in a second attempt to seize the Isle of Wight, and to accept the French competitor for the English crown in the person of the Queen of Scots.[284] Thus fatally the friends of the Reformation played into the hands of its enemies. By the solid mass of Englishmen the armed interference of France was more dreaded than even a Spanish sovereign; and the heresy became doubly odious which was tampering with the hereditary enemies of the realm. In London only the revolutionary spirit continued vigorous, and broke out perpetually in unexpected forms. At the beginning of March three hundred schoolboys met in a meadow outside the city walls: half were for Wyatt and for France, half for the Prince of Spain; and, not all in play (for evidently they chose their sides by their sympathies), they joined battle, and fought with the fierceness of grown men. The combat ended in the capture of the representative of Philip, who was dragged to a gallows, and would have been hanged upon it, had not the spectators interfered.[285] The boys were laid hands upon. The youngest were whipped, the elder imprisoned. It was said that the queen thought of gibbeting one of these innocents in real fact, for an example; or, as Noailles put it, as an expiation for the sins of the people.[286]

[Footnote 283: "When the Ambassador replied that
his master minded to do justly, her Grace
remembering how those traitors be there aided,
especially such of them as had conspired her death
and were in arms in the field against her; and
being not able to bear those words, so contrary to
their doings, told the Ambassador that, for her own
part, her Majesty minded simply and plainly to
perform as she had promised, and might with safe
conscience swear she ever meant so; but, for their
part, her Grace would not swear so, and being those
arrant traitors so entertained there as they be,
she could not have found in her heart to have used,
in like matter, the semblable part towards his
master for the gain of two realms, and with those
words she departed."--Gardiner to Wotton: _French
MSS._ bundle xi.]

[Footnote 284: On the 29th of April Wotton wrote in
a cypher to Mary; "Towards the end of the summer
the French king, by Peter Carew's provocation,
intendeth to land the rebels, with a number of
Scots, in Essex, and in the Isle of Wight, where
they mean to land easily, and either go on, if any
number of Englishmen resort unto them, as they say
many will, or else fortify themselves there. They
council the French king to make war against your
Highness in the right and title of the young Queen
of Scots."--_French MSS._ bundle xi.]

[Footnote 285: The execution was commenced in
earnest. The prince, says Noailles, "fust
souldainement mesne au gibet par ceulx de la part
du Roy et de M. Wyatt; et sans quelques hommes qui
tout a propoz y accoururent, ils l'eussent
estrangle; ce que se peult clairement juger par les
marques qu'il en a et aura encores d'icy a long
temps au col."--Noailles to Montmorency:
_Ambassades_, vol. iii.]

[Footnote 286: Dict on qu'elle veult que l'ung
d'eulx soit sacrifie pour tout le peuple.--Ibid.]

Over Elizabeth, in the meantime, the fatal net appeared to be closing; Lord Russell had received a letter for her from Wyatt, which, though the princess declared that it had never been in her hands, he said that he had forwarded; and Wyatt himself was flattered with hopes of life if he would extend his confession. Renard carried his ingenuity farther; he called {p.123} in the assistance of Lady Wyatt, and promised her that her husband should be spared; he even urged the queen to gain over, by judicious leniency, a man whose apostasy would be a fresh disgrace to his cause, and who might be as useful as a servant as he had been dangerous as a foe.[287] Wyatt, being a man without solidity of heart, showed signs of yielding to what was required of him; but his revelations came out slowly, and to quicken his confession he was brought to his trial on the 15th of March. He pleaded guilty to the indictment, and he then said that Courtenay had been the instigator of the conspiracy; he had written to Elizabeth, he said, to advise her to remove as far as possible from London, and Elizabeth had returned him a verbal message of thanks. This being not enough, he was sentenced to death; but he was made to feel that he might still earn his pardon if he would implicate Elizabeth more deeply; and though he said nothing definite, he allowed himself to drop vague hints that he could tell more if he pleased.[288]

[Footnote 287: Ce qui faict juger a beaulcoup de
gens que Wyatt ne mourra point, mais que la dicte
dame le rendra tant son oblige par ceste grace de
luy rendre la vie qu'elle en pourra tirer beaulcoup
de bons et grandes services. Ce qui se faict par le
moyen dudict ambassadeur de l'Empereur par l'advis
duquel se conduisent aujourdhuy toutes les opinions
d'icelle dame, et lequele traice ceste composition
avecques la femme dudict Wyatt a laquelle comme
l'on diet il a asseure la vie de son dict
mari.--Noailles to the Constable of France, March
31. Renard's secrets were betrayed to Noailles by
"a corrupt secretary" of the Flemish
embassy.--Wotton to the Queen: _French MSS._ bundle
xi. State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 288: Noailles says: Wyatt a este condamne
a mourir; toutesfois il n'est encores execute et
avant que luy prononcer sa sentence on luy avoit
promis tant de belles choses que vaincu par leur
doulces paroles oultre sa deliberation, il a accuse
beaulcoup de personnages et parle au desadvantage
de mylord de Courtenay et de Madame
Elizabeth.--Noailles to d'Oysel, March 29. The
different parties were so much interested in
Wyatt's confession, that his very last words are so
wrapped round with contradictions, that one cannot
tell what they were. It is certain, however, that
he did implicate Elizabeth to some extent; it is
certain, also, that he did not say enough for the
purposes of the court, and that the court believed
he could say more if he would, for, on Easter
Sunday he communicated, and the queen was
distressed that he should have been allowed to
partake, while his confession was incomplete. As to
Courtenay, Renard said he had communicated enough,
"mais quant a Elizabeth l'on ne peult encores
tomber en preuves suffisantes pour les loys
d'Angleterre contre elle."--Renard to Charles V.:
_Rolls House MSS._]

At all events, however, sufficient evidence had been obtained in the opinion of the court for the committal of the princess to the Tower. On the day of Wyatt's trial, the council met, but separated without a resolution; on Friday, the 16th, Elizabeth was examined before them in person; and when she withdrew, Gardiner required that she should be sent to the Tower instantly. Paget, supported by Sussex, Hastings, and Cornwallis, said that {p.124} there was no evidence to justify so violent a measure.[289] Which of you, then, said Gardiner, with dexterous ingenuity, will be responsible for the safe keeping of her person?

[Footnote 289: Holinshed says that a certain lord
exclaimed that there would be no safety for the
realm until Elizabeth's head was off her shoulders;
and either Holinshed himself, or his editor, wrote
in the margin opposite, the words: "The wicked
advice of Lord Paget."--Renard describes so
distinctly the attitude of Paget, that there can be
no doubt whatever of the injustice of such a charge
against him.]

The guardian of Elizabeth would be exposed to a hundred dangers and a thousand suspicions; the lords answered that Gardiner was conspiring their destruction. No one could be found courageous enough to undertake the charge, and they gave their reluctant consent to his demand. The same night Elizabeth's attendants were removed, a hundred soldiers were picketed in the garden below her window, and on Saturday morning (March 17) the Marquis of Winchester and Lord Sussex waited on her to communicate her destination, and to attend her to a barge.

The terrible name of the Tower was like a death-knell; the princess entreated a short delay till she could write a few words to the queen; the queen could not know the truth, she said, or else she was played upon by Gardiner. Alas! she did not know the queen: Winchester hesitated; Lord Sussex, more generous, accepted the risk, and promised, on his knees, to place her letter in the queen's hands.

The very lines traced by Elizabeth in that bitter moment may still be read in the State Paper Office,[290] and her hand was more than usually firm.

[Footnote 290: _MS. Mary, Domestic_, vol. iv.
Printed by Ellis, 2nd series, vol. ii. p. 255.]

"If ever any one," she wrote, "did try this old saying that a king's word was more than another man's oath, I most humbly beseech your majesty to verify it in me, and to remember your last promise, and my last demand, that I be not condemned without answer and due proof, which it seems that I now am: for that without cause proved I am by your council from you commanded to go unto the Tower, a place more wonted for a false traitor than a true subject: which, though I know I deserve it not, yet in the face of all this realm appears that it is proved; which I pray God that I may die the shamefullest death that any died, afore I may mean any such thing: and to this present hour I protest, afore God who shall judge my truth, whatsoever malice shall devise, that I never practised, counselled, nor consented to anything that might be prejudicial to your person any {p.125} way, or dangerous to the state by any means. And I therefore humbly beseech your majesty to let me answer afore yourself, and not suffer me to trust to your councillors; yea, and that afore I go to the Tower, if it is possible; if not, afore I be further condemned. Howbeit, I trust assuredly your highness will give me leave to do it afore I go, for that thus shamefully I may not be cried out on, as now I shall be, yea, and without cause. Let conscience move your highness to take some better way with me, than to make me be condemned in all men's sight, afore my desert known. Also, I most humbly beseech your highness to pardon this my boldness, which innocency procures me to do, together with hope of your natural kindness, which I trust will not see me cast away without desert: which what it is I would desire no more of God than that you truly knew; which thing, I think and believe, you shall never by report know, unless by yourself you hear. I have heard in my time of many cast away for want of coming to the presence of their prince; and in late days I heard my Lord of Somerset say that, if his brother had been suffered to speak with him, he had never suffered; but the persuasions were made to him so great, that he was brought in belief that he could not live safely if the admiral lived, and that made him give his consent to his death. Though these persons are not to be compared to your majesty, yet I pray God as evil persuasions persuade not one sister against the other, and all for that they have heard false reports, and not hearken to the truth known; therefore, once again kneeling with all humbleness of my heart, because I am not suffered to bow the knees of my body, I humbly crave to speak with your highness, which I would not be so bold to desire if I knew not myself most clear, as I know myself most true. And as for the traitor Wyatt, he might peradventure write me a letter, but on my faith I never received any from him; and for the copy of my letter sent to the French king, I pray God confound me eternally if ever I sent him word, message, token, or letter by any means:[291] and to this my truth I will stand to my death your highness's most faithful subject that hath been from the beginning, and will be to the end." Elizabeth.

[Footnote 291: As soon as Noailles learnt that his
enclosure formed part of the case against
Elizabeth, he came forward to acquit her of having
furnished him with it; "jurant et blasphemant tous
les sermens du monde pour la justification de la
dicte Dame Elizabeth."--Renard to Charles V., April
3: _Rolls House MSS._]

"I humbly crave but one word of answer from yourself."

{p.126} Had Elizabeth known the history of those words of the queen to her, to which she appealed, she would have spared herself the trouble of writing this letter. Sussex fulfilled his promise, and during the delay the tide turned, and the barge could not pass London Bridge till the following day. The queen could not venture to send the princess through the streets; and in dread lest, at the last moment, her prey should be snatched from her, she answered the appeal only by storming at the bearer, and at his friends in the council. "They were going no good way," she said, "for their lives they durst not have acted so in her father's time; she wished that he was alive and among them but for a single month."[292]

[Footnote 292: Renard.]

At nine o'clock the next morning--it was Palm Sunday (March 18)--the two lords returned to Elizabeth to tell her that her letter had failed. As she crossed the garden to the water she threw up her eyes to the queen's window, but there was no sign of recognition. What do the lords mean, she said, that they suffer me thus to be led into captivity? The barge was too deep to approach sufficiently near to the landing-place at the Tower to enable her to step upon the causeway without wetting her feet; it was raining too, and the petty inconveniences, fretting against the dreadful associations of the Traitors' Gate, shook her self-command. She refused to land; then sharply rejecting an offer of assistance, she sprang out upon the mud. "Are all those harnessed men there for me?" she said to Sir John Gage, who was waiting with the Tower guard. "No, madam," Gage answered. "Yes," she said, "I know it is so; it needed not for me, being but a weak woman. I never thought to have come in here a prisoner," she went on, turning to the soldiers; "I pray you all good fellows and friends, bear me witness that I come in no traitor, but as true a woman to the queen's majesty as any is now living, and thereon will I take my death." She threw herself down upon a wet stone; Lord Chandos begged her to come under shelter out of the rain: "better sitting here than in a worse place," she cried; "I know not whither you will bring me."

But it was not in Elizabeth's nature to protract a vain resistance; she rose, and passed on, and as she approached the room intended for her, the heavy doors along the corridor were locked and barred behind her. At the grating of the iron bolts the heart of Lord Sussex sank in him: Sussex knew the queen's true feelings, and the efforts which were made to lash her into {p.127} cruelty; "What mean ye, my lords," he said to Chandos and Gage, "what will you do?" "she was a king's daughter, and is the queen's sister; go no further than your commission, which I know what it is."[293]

[Footnote 293: Contemporary Narrative: _Harleian
MSS._ 419. _Chronicle of Queen Mary_, p. 71.
Holinshed.]

The chief danger was of murder--of some swift desperate act which could not be undone; the lords who had so reluctantly permitted Elizabeth to be imprisoned would not allow her to be openly sacrificed, or indeed permit the queen to continue in the career of vengeance on which she had entered. The executions on account of the rebellion had not ceased even yet. In Kent, London, and in the midland counties, day after day, one, two, or more persons had been put to death; six gentlemen were, at that very moment, on their way to Maidstone and Rochester to suffer. The lords, on the day of Elizabeth's committal, held a meeting while Gardiner was engaged elsewhere; they determined to remonstrate, and, if necessary, to insist on a change of course, and Paget undertook to be the bearer of the message. He found Mary in her oratory after vespers; he told her that the season might remind a sovereign of other duties besides revenge; already too much blood had been shed; the noble house of Suffolk was all but destroyed; and he said distinctly that if she attempted any more executions, he and his friends would interfere; the hideous scenes had lasted too long, and, as an earnest of a return to mercy, he demanded the pardon of the six gentlemen.

Mary, as she lamented afterwards to Renard, was unprepared; she was pressed in terms which showed that those who made the request did not intend to be refused--and she consented.[294] The six gentlemen escaped; and, following up this beginning, the council, in the course of the week, extorted from her the release of Northampton, Cobham, and one of his sons, with five others. In a report to the emperor, Renard admitted that, if the queen attempted to continue her course of justice, there would be resistance; and the party of the chancellor, being the weakest, would in that case be overwhelmed. It was the more necessary, therefore, that, by one means or another, Elizabeth should be disposed of. The queen had condescended to apologise to him for her second act of clemency, which she excused as being an Easter custom. It was not for him to find fault, he said that he had replied, if her majesty was pleased to {p.128} show mercy at the holy season; but it was his duty to remind her that he doubted whether the prince could be trusted with her.

[Footnote 294: Renard to Charles V., March 22;
_Rolls House MSS._]

This argument never failed to drive Mary to madness; and, on the other side, Renard applied to Gardiner to urge despatch in bringing Elizabeth to trial: as long as she lived, there was no security for the queen, for the prince, or for religion. Gardiner echoed the same opinion. If others, he said, would go to work as roundly as himself, all would be well.[295]

[Footnote 295: Il me repliqua que vivant Elizabeth
il n'a espoir a la tranquillite du Royaulme, que
quant a luy si chascun alloit si rondement en
besoyn comme il fait, les choses se porteroient
mieux.--Renard to the Emperor, April 3: _Rolls
House MSS._ From these dark plotters, what might
not be feared? Holinshed says that while Elizabeth
was in the Tower, a writ was sent down for her
execution devised, as was believed, by Gardiner;
and that Lord Chandos (Sir John Brydges, the
Lieutenant of the Tower) refused to put it in
force. The story has been treated as a fable, and
in the form in which it is told by Holinshed, it
was very likely untrue: yet in the presence of
these infernal conversations, I think it highly
probable that, as the hope of a judicial conviction
grew fainter, schemes were talked of, and were
perhaps tried, for cutting the knot in a decisive
manner. In revolutionary times men feel that if
to-day is theirs, to-morrow may be their enemies';
and they are not particularly scrupulous. The
anxious words of Sussex did not refer to the merely
barring a prisoner's door.]

In this condition of the political atmosphere parliament assembled on the 2nd of April. The Oxford scheme had been relinquished as impracticable. The Lord Mayor informed the queen that he would not answer for the peace of the city in the absence of the court; the Tower might be surprised and the prisoners released; and to lose the Tower would be to lose the crown. The queen said that she would not leave London while her sister's fate was undetermined.[296] The Houses met, therefore, as usual, as Westminster, and the speech from the throne was read in Mary's presence by the chancellor.

[Footnote 296: Renard.]

Since the last parliament, Gardiner said, the people of England had given proofs of unruly humour. The queen was their undoubted sovereign, and a measure would be submitted to the Lords and Commons to declare, in some emphatic manner, her claim to her subjects' obedience.

Her majesty desiring, further, in compliance with her subjects' wishes, to take a husband, she had fixed her choice on the Prince of Spain, as a person agreeable to herself and likely to be a valuable friend to the realm: the people, however, had insolently and ignorantly presumed to mutiny against her intentions, and, in her affection for the commonwealth, her majesty had consented to submit the articles of the marriage to the approval of parliament.

{p.129} Again, her majesty would desire them to take into their consideration the possible failure of the blood royal, and adopt necessary precautions to secure an undisturbed succession to the crown. It would be for the parliament to decide whether the privilege which had been granted to Henry VIII. of bequeathing the crown by will might not be, with propriety, extended to her present majesty.[297]

[Footnote 297: Noailles, vol. iii. p. 141.]

Finally, and at great length, the chancellor spoke of religion. The late rebellion, he said, was properly a religious rebellion: it was the work of men who despised the sacraments, and were the enemies of truth, order, and godliness. A measure would be laid before the legislature for the better restraint of irregular licence of opinion.

The marriage was to pass quietly. Those of the Lords and Commons who persevered in their disapproval were a small minority, and did not intend to appear.[298] The bill, therefore, passed both Houses by the 12th of April.[299] The marriage articles were those originally offered by the emperor, with the English clauses attached, and some explanatory paragraphs, that no room might be left for laxity of interpretation.[300] Lord Bedford and Lord Fitzwalter had already gone to Plymouth, where a ship was in readiness to carry them to Spain. They waited only till the parliamentary forms were completed, and immediately sailed. Lord William Howard would go to sea with the fleet, at his earliest convenience, to protect the passage, and the prince might be expected in England by the end of May. The bill for the queen's authority was carried also without objection. The forms of English law running only in the name of a king, it had been pretended that a queen could not be a lawful sovereign. A declaratory statute explained that the kingly prerogative was the same, whether vested in male or female.[301] Here, however, unanimity was at an end. The paragraph about the succession in the queen's speech being obviously aimed at Elizabeth, produced such an irritation in the council, as well as in parliament, that Renard expected it would end in actual armed conflict.[302]

[Footnote 298: Renard to Charles V., April 7.]

[Footnote 299: 1 Mary, cap. ii.]

[Footnote 300: See the treaty of marriage between
Philip and Mary in Rymer.]

[Footnote 301: 1 Mary, cap. i.]

[Footnote 302: Y a telle confusion que l'on
n'attend sinon que la querelle se demesle par les
armes et tumults.--Renard to Charles V., April 22.]

From the day of Elizabeth's imprisonment Gardiner had laboured to extort evidence against her by fair means or foul.[303] {p.130} She had been followed to the Tower by her servants. Sir John Gage desired that her food should be dressed by people of his own. The servants refused to allow themselves to be displaced,[304] and, to the distress of Renard, angry words had been addressed to Gage by Lord Howard, so that they could not be removed by force.[305]

[Footnote 303: Holinshed says, Edmund Tremayne was
racked, and I have already quoted Gardiner's letter
to Petre, suggesting the racking of "little
Wyatt."]

[Footnote 304: Her grace's cook said to him, My
lord, I will never suffer any stranger to come
about her diet but her own sworn men as long as I
live.--_Harleian MSS._ 419, and see Holinshed.]

[Footnote 305: L'Admiral s'est colere au grand
chamberlain de la Royne que a la garde de la dicte
Elizabeth et luy a dit qu'elle feroit encores
trancher tant de testes que luy et autres s'en
repentiroient.--Renard to Charles V., April 7:
_Rolls House MSS._]

The temptation of life having failed, after all, to induce Wyatt to enlarge his confession beyond his first acknowledgments, it was determined to execute him. On the 11th of April he was brought out of his cell, and on his way to the scaffold he was confronted with Courtenay, to whom he said something, but how much or what it is impossible to ascertain.[306] Finding that his death was inevitable, he determined to make the only reparation which was any longer in his power to Elizabeth. When placed on the platform, after desiring the people to pray for him, lamenting his crime, and expressing a hope that he might be the last person to suffer for the rebellion, he concluded thus:

[Footnote 306: Lord Chandos stated the same day in
the House of Lords that he threw himself at
Courtenay's feet and implored him to confess the
truth. The sheriffs of London, on the other hand,
said that he entreated Courtenay to forgive him for
the false charges which he had brought against him
and against Elizabeth.--Foxe, vol. vi. Compare
_Chronicle of Queen Mary_, p. 72, note.]

"Whereas it is said abroad that I should accuse my Lady Elizabeth's Grace and my Lord Courtenay; it is not so, good people, for I assure you neither they nor any other now yonder in hold or durance was privy of my rising or commotion before I began."[307]

[Footnote 307: So far the _Chronicle of Queen
Mary_, Holinshed, Stow, and the narratives among
the _Harleian MSS._ essentially agree. But the
chronicle followed by Stow makes Wyatt add, "As I
have declared no less to the Queen's council;"
whereas Foxe says that he admitted that he had
spoken otherwise to the council, but had spoken
untruly. Noailles tells all that was really
important in a letter to d'Oysel: "M. Wyatt eust la
teste coupee, dischargeant advant que de mourir
Madame Elizabeth et Courtenay qu'il avoit
aulparavant charge de s'estre entendus en son
entreprinse sur promesses que l'on luy avoit
faictes de luy saulver la vie."--Noailles, vol.
iii.]

The words, or the substance of them, were heard by every one. Weston, who attended as confessor, shouted, "Believe him not, good people! he confessed otherwise before the council." {p.131} "That which I said then I said," answered Wyatt, "but that which I say now is true." The executioner did his office, and Wyatt's work, for good or evil, was ended.

All that the court had gained by his previous confessions was now more than lost. London rang with the story that Wyatt, in dying, had cleared Courtenay and Elizabeth.[308] Gardiner still thundered in the Star Chamber on the certainty of their guilt, and pilloried two decent citizens who had repeated Wyatt's words; but his efforts were vain, and the hope of a legal conviction was at an end. The judges declared that against Elizabeth there was now no evidence;[309] and, even if there had been evidence, Renard wrote to his master, that the court could not dare to proceed further against her, from fear of Lord William Howard, who had the whole naval force of England at his disposal, and, in indignation at Elizabeth's treatment, might join the French and the exiles.[310] Perplexed to know how to dispose of her, the ambassador and the chancellor thought of sending her off to Pomfret Castle; doubtless, if once within Pomfret walls, to find the fate of the second Richard there: but again the spectre of Lord Howard terrified them.

[Footnote 308: Courtenay, however, certainly _was_
guilty; and had Wyatt acquitted Elizabeth without
naming Courtenay, his words would have been far
more effective than they were. This, however, it
was hard for Wyatt to do, as it would have been
equivalent to a repetition of his accusations.]

[Footnote 309: Les gens de loy ne treuvent matiere
pour la condamner.--Renard to Charles V., April 22:
Tytler, vol. ii.]

[Footnote 310: Ibid. And see a passage in the MS.,
which Mr. Tytler has omitted.]

The threatened escape of her sister, too, was but the beginning of the queen's sorrows. On the 17th of April Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was tried at the Guildhall for having been a party to the conspiracy. The confessions of many of the prisoners had more or less implicated Throgmorton. Cuthbert Vaughan, who was out with Wyatt, swore in the court that Throgmorton had discussed the plan of the insurrection with him; and Throgmorton himself admitted that he had talked to Sir Peter Carew and Wyatt about the probability of a rebellion. He it was, too, who was to have conducted Courtenay to Andover on his flight into Devonshire; and the evidence[311] leaves very little doubt that he was concerned as deeply as any one who did not actually take up arms. Sir Nicholas, however, defended himself with resolute pertinacity; he fought through all the charges against him, and dissected the depositions with the skill of a practised pleader; and in the end, the jury returned the bold verdict of {p.132} "Not guilty." Sir Thomas Bromley urged them to remember themselves. The foreman answered they had found the verdict according to their consciences.

[Footnote 311: It is printed at length in
Holinshed.]

Their consciences probably found less difficulty in the facts charged against Throgmorton than in the guilt to be attached to them. The verdict was intended as a rebuke to the cruelty with which the rebellion had been punished, and it was received as an insult to the crown. The crowd, as Throgmorton left the court, threw up their caps and shouted. The queen was ill for three days with mortification,[312] and insisted that the jurors should be punished. They were arrested, and kept as prisoners till the following winter, when they were released on payment of the ruinous fine of L2000. Throgmorton himself was seized again on some other pretext, and sent again to the Tower. The council, or Paget's party there, remonstrated against the arrest; they yielded, however, perhaps that they might make the firmer stand on more important matters.

[Footnote 312: Que tant altere la dicte dame
qu'elle a este trois jours malade, et n'est encore
bien d'elle.--Renard to Charles V.: Tytler, vol.
ii. p. 374.]

Since Elizabeth could not be executed, the court were the more anxious to carry the Succession Bill. Gardiner's first desire was that Elizabeth should be excluded by name; but Paget said that this was impossible.[313] As little could a measure be passed empowering the queen to leave the crown by will, for that would be but the same thing under another form. Following up his purpose, notwithstanding, Gardiner brought out in the House of Lords a pedigree, tracing Philip's descent from John of Gaunt; and he introduced a bill to make offences against his person high treason. But at the second reading the important words were introduced, "during the queen's lifetime;"[314] the bill was read a third time, and then disappeared; and Paget had been the loudest of its opponents.[315]

[Footnote 313: He whom you wrote of comes to me
with a sudden and strange proposal, that, since
matters against Madame Elizabeth do not take the
turn which was wished, there should be an Act
brought into Parliament to disinherit her. I
replied that I would give no consent to such a
scheme.--Paget to Renard: Tytler, vol. ii. p. 382.]

[Footnote 314: _Lords Journals._]

[Footnote 315: Renard complains of Paget's conduct
bitterly.--Renard to Charles V., May 1: Tytler,
vol. ii.]

Beaten on the succession, the chancellor, in spite of Renard's remonstrances, brought forward next his Religious Persecution Bills. The House of Commons went with him to some extent; and, to secure success in some form or other, he introduced three separate measures, either of which would answer his purpose--{p.133} a bill for the restoration of the Six Articles, a bill to re-enact the Lollard Statute of Henry IV., _De Haeretico Comburendo_, and a bill to restore (in more than its original vigour) the Episcopal Jurisdiction. The Six Articles had so bad a name that the first bill was read once only, and was dropped; the two others passed the Commons,[316] and, on the 26th of April, the Bishops' Authority Bill came before the Lords. Lord Paget was so far in advance of his time that he could not hope to appeal with a chance of success to his own principles of judicious latitudinarianism; but he determined, if possible, to prevent Gardiner's intended cruelties from taking effect, and he spread an alarm that, if the bishops were restored to their unrestricted powers, under one form or other the holders of the abbey lands would be at their mercy. To allay the suspicion, another bill was carried through the Commons, providing expressly for the safety of the holders of those lands; but the tyranny of the episcopal courts was so recent, and the ecclesiastics had shown themselves uniformly so little capable of distinguishing between right and wrong when the interests of religion were at stake, that the jealousy, once aroused, could not be checked. The irritation became so hot and so general as to threaten again the most dangerous consequences; and Paget, pretending to be alarmed at the excitement which he had raised, urged Renard to use his influence with the queen to dissolve parliament.[317]

[Footnote 316: _Commons Journals._]

[Footnote 317: Paget to Renard; Tytler, vol. ii. p.
382. And compare Renard's correspondence with the
emperor during the month of April.--_Rolls House
MSS._]