The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (250 page)

After this proof of the dispositions of the people, especially of the Londoners, who were mostly protestants, Wiat was encouraged to proceed: He led his forces to Southwark, where he required of the queen, that she should put the Tower into his hands, should deliver four counsellors as hostages, and in order to ensure the liberty of the nation, should immediately marry an Englishman. Finding that the bridge was secured against him, and that the city was overawed, he marched up to Kingston, where he passed the river with 4000 men; and returning towards London, hoped to encourage his partizans, who had engaged to declare for him. He had imprudently wasted so much time at Southwark, and in his march from Kingston, that the critical season, on which all popular commotions depend, was entirely lost: Though he entered Westminster without resistance, his followers, finding that no person of note joined him, insensibly fell off, and he was at last seized near Temple-Bar by Sir Maurice Berkeley

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Four hundred persons are said to have suffered for this 6th Feb.

rebellion:
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Four hundred more were conducted before the queen with ropes about their necks; and falling on their knees, received a pardon, and were dismissed. Wiat was condemned and executed:

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As it had been reported, that, on his examination, he had accused Insurrection the lady Elizabeth and the earl of Devonshire as accomplices, he suppressed.

took care on the scaffold, before the whole people, fully to acquit them of having any share in his rebellion.

The lady Elizabeth had been, during some time, treated with great harshness by her sister; and many studied instances of discouragement and disrespect had been practiced against her. She was ordered to take place at court after the countess of Lenox and the dutchess of Suffolk, as if she were not legitimate:
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Her friends were discountenanced on every occasion: And while her virtues, which were now become eminent, drew to her the attendance of all the young nobility, and rendered her the favourite of the nation,
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the malevolence of the queen still discovered itself every day by fresh symptoms, and obliged the princess to retire into the country. Mary seized the opportunity of this rebellion; and hoping to involve her sister in some appearance of guilt, sent for her under a strong guard, committed her to the Tower, and ordered her to be strictly examined by the council. But the public declaration made by Wiat rendered it impracticable to employ against her any false evidence, which might have offered; and the princess made so good a defence, that the queen found herself under a necessity of releasing her.
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In order to send her out of the kingdom, a marriage was offered her with the duke of Savoy; and when she declined the proposal, she was

committed to custody, under a strong guard, at Wodestoke.y
The earl of Devonshire, though equally innocent, was confined in Fotheringay castle.

But this rebellion proved still more fatal to the lady Jane Gray, as well as to her husband: The duke of Suffolk’s guilt was imputed to her; and though the rebels and malcontents seemed chiefly to rest their hopes on the lady Elizabeth and the earl of Devonshire, the queen, incapable of generosity or clemency, determined to remove every person from whom the least danger could be apprehended. Warning was given the lady Jane to prepare for death; a doom which she had long expected, and which the innocence of her life, as well as the misfortunes, to which she had been exposed, rendered nowise unwelcome to her. The queen’s zeal, under colour of tender mercy to the prisoner’s soul, induced her to send divines, who harassed her with perpetual disputation; and even a reprieve for three days was granted her, in hopes that she would be persuaded, during that time, to pay, by a timely conversion, some regard to her eternal welfare. The lady Jane had presence of mind, in those melancholy circumstances, not only to defend her religion by all the topics then in use, but also to write a letter to her sister,
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in the Greek language; in which, besides sending her a copy of the Scriptures in that tongue, she exhorted her to maintain in every fortune, a like steady perseverance.

On the day of her execution, her husband, lord Guilford, desired 12th Feb.

permission to see her; but she refused her consent, and informed him by a message, that the tenderness of their parting would overcome the fortitude of both, and would too much unbend their minds from that constancy, which their approaching end required of them: Their separation, she said, would be only for a moment; and they would soon rejoin each other in a scene, where their affections would be for ever united, and where death, disappointment, and misfortunes could no longer have access to them, or disturb their eternal felicity.
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It had been intended to execute the lady Jane and lord Guilford together on the same scaffold at Tower-hill; but the council, dreading the compassion of the people for their youth, beauty, innocence, and noble birth, changed their orders, and gave directions that she should be beheaded within the verge of the Tower.

She saw her husband led to execution; and having given him Execution of lady

from the window some token of her remembrance, she waited Jane Gray.

with tranquillity till her own appointed hour should bring her to a like fate. She even saw his headless body carried back in a cart; and found herself more confirmed by the reports, which she heard of the constancy of his end, than shaken by so tender and melancholy a spectacle. Sir John Gage, constable of the Tower, when he led her to execution, desired her to bestow on him some small present, which he might keep as a perpetual memorial of her: She gave him her table-book, on which she had just written three sentences on seeing her husband’s dead

body; one in Greek, another in Latin, a third in English.b
The purport of them was, that human justice was against his body, but divine mercy would be favourable to his soul; that, if her fault deserved punishment, her youth at least, and her imprudence were worthy of excuse; and that God and posterity, she trusted, would show her favour. On the scaffold, she made a speech to the by-standers; in which the mildness of her disposition led her to take the blame wholly on herself, without uttering one complaint against the severity, with which she had been treated. She said, that her offence was not the having laid her hand upon the crown, but the not rejecting it with sufficient constancy: That she had less erred through ambition than through reverence to her parents, whom she had been taught to respect and obey: That she willingly received death, as the only satisfaction, which she could now make to the injured state; and though her infringement of the laws had been constrained, she would show, by her voluntary submission to their sentence, that she was desirous to atone for that disobedience, into which too much filial piety had betrayed her: That she had justly deserved this punishment for being made the instrument, though the unwilling instrument, of the ambition of others: And that the story of her life, she hoped, might at least be useful, by proving that innocence excuses not great misdeeds, if they tend any wise to the destruction of the commonwealth. After uttering these words, she caused herself to be disrobed by her women; and with a steddy serene countenance

submitted herself to the executioner.c

The duke of Suffolk was tried, condemned, and executed soon after; and would have met with more compassion, had not his temerity been the cause of his daughter’s untimely end. Lord Thomas Gray lost his life for the same crime. Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was tried in Guildhall; but there appearing no satisfactory evidence against him, he was able, by making an admirable defence, to obtain a verdict of the jury in his favour. The queen was so enraged at this disappointment, that, instead of releasing him as the law required, she re-committed him to the Tower, and kept him in close confinement during some time. But her resentment stopped not here: The jury, being summoned before the council, were all sent to prison, and afterwards

fined, some of them a thousand pounds, others two thousand a-piece.d
This violence proved fatal to several; among others to Sir John Throgmorton, brother to Sir Nicholas, who was condemned on no better evidence than had formerly been rejected.

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her suspicion. And finding, that she was universally hated, she determined to disable the people from resistance, by ordering general musters, and directing the commissioners to seize their arms, and lay them up in forts and castles.
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Though the government laboured under so general an odium, the queen’s authority had received such an encrease from the suppression of Wiat’s rebellion, that the ministry hoped to find a compliant disposition in the new parliament, which was summoned to assemble. The emperor, also, in order to facilitate the same end, had borrowed no less a sum than 400,000 crowns, which he had A parliament. 5th sent over to England, to be distributed in bribes and pensions April.

among the members: A pernicious practice, of which there had not hitherto been any instance in England. And not to give the public any alarm with regard to the church lands, the queen, notwithstanding her bigotry, resumed her title of supreme head of the church, which she had dropped three months before. Gardiner, the chancellor, opened the session by a speech; in which he asserted the queen’s hereditary title to the crown; maintained her right of chusing a husband for herself; observed how proper a use she had made of that right, by giving the preference to an old ally, descended from the house of Burgundy; and remarked the failure of Henry VIII’s posterity, of whom there now remained none but the queen and the lady Elizabeth. He added, that, in order to obviate the inconveniencies, which might arise from different pretenders, it was necessary to invest the queen, by law, with a power of disposing of the crown, and of appointing her successor: A power, he said, which was not to be thought unprecedented in England, since it had formerly been conferred

on Henry VIII.f

The parliament was much disposed to gratify the queen in all her desires; but when the liberty, independency, and very being of the nation were in such visible danger, they could not by any means be brought to compliance. They knew both the inveterate hatred, which she bore to the lady Elizabeth, and her devoted attachment to the house of Austria: They were acquainted with her extreme bigotry, which would lead her to postpone all considerations of justice or national interest to the establishment of the catholic religion: They remarked, that Gardiner had carefully avoided, in his speech, the giving to Elizabeth the appellation of the queen’s sister; and they thence concluded, that a design was formed of excluding her as illegitimate: They expected, that Mary, if invested with such a power as she required, would make a will in her husband’s favour, and thereby render England for ever a province to the Spanish monarchy: And they were the more alarmed with these projects, as they heard, that Philip’s descent from the house of Lancaster was carefully insisted on, and that he was publicly represented as the true and only heir by right of inheritance.

The parliament, therefore, aware of their danger, were determined to keep at a distance from the precipice, which lay before them. They could not avoid ratifying the

articles of marriage,g
which were drawn very favourable for England; but they declined the passing of any such law as the chancellor pointed out to them: They would not so much as declare it treason to imagine or attempt the death of the queen’s husband, while she was alive; and a bill introduced for that purpose, was laid aside after the first reading. The more effectually to cut off Philip’s hopes of possessing any authority in England, they passed a law, in which they declared, “that her majesty as PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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their only queen, should solely and as a sole queen, enjoy the crown and sovereignty of her realms, with all the pre-eminencies, dignities, and rights thereto belonging, in as large and ample a manner after her marriage as before, without any title or claim accruing to the prince of Spain, either as tenant by courtesy of the realm, or by any other means.
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A law passed in this parliament for re-erecting the bishopric of Durham, which had been dissolved by the last parliament of Edward.
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The queen had already, by an exertion of her power, put Tonstal in possession of that see: But though it was usual at that time for the crown to assume authority which might seem entirely legislative, it was always deemed more safe and satisfactory to procure the sanction of parliament.

Bills were introduced for suppressing heterodox opinions contained in books, and for reviving the law of the six articles, together with those against the Lollards, and against heresy and erroneous preaching: But none of these laws could pass the two houses. A proof, that the parliament had reserves even in their concessions with regard to religion; about which they seem to have been less scrupulous.

The queen, therefore, finding that they would not serve all her 5th May.

purposes, finished the session by dissolving them.

Mary’s thoughts were now entirely employed about receiving Don Philip, whose arrival she hourly expected. This princess, who had lived so many years in a very reserved and private manner, without any prospect or hopes of a husband, was so smitten with affection for her young consort, whom she had never seen, that she waited with the utmost impatience for the completion of the marriage; and every obstacle was to her a source of anxiety and discontent.
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She complained of Philip’s delays as affected; and she could not conceal her vexation, that, though she brought him a kingdom as her dowry, he treated her with such neglect, that he had never yet favoured her with a single letter.
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Her fondness was but the more encreased by this supercilious treatment; and when she found that her subjects had entertained the greatest aversion for the event, to which she directed her fondest wishes, she made the whole English nation the object of her resentment. A squadron, under the command of lord Effingham, had been fitted out to convoy Philip from Spain, where he then resided; but the admiral informing her, that the discontents ran very high among the seamen, and that it was not safe for Philip to entrust himself in their hands, she gave orders to dismiss them.
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She then dreaded, lest the French fleet, being masters of the sea, might intercept her husband; and every rumour of danger, every blast of wind, threw her into panics and convulsions. Her health, and even her understanding, were visibly hurt by this extreme impatience; and she was struck with a new apprehension, lest her person, impaired by time, and blasted by sickness, should prove disagreeable to her future consort. Her glass discovered to her how hagard she was become; and when she remarked the decay of her beauty, she knew not whether she ought more to