Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/373

A.D. 1554.] and to his intense indignation. In case of children by this new marriage, Burgundy and Flanders were to pass away from him, and if he had himself no issue, Spain, Sicily, Milan, and the rest of the Spanish territories were to fall to Mary's offspring.

Notwithstanding all these promises of aggrandisement to England, the match acquired no favour in the eyes of the people. The nest day, the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and forty of the most eminent citizens of London were summoned to Court, and Gardiner there made known to them what had taken place, and detailed all the conditions, amplifying and making them as imposing as possible, and bidding those City authorities rejoice in so auspicious an event. But the affair by this means becoming known to the public, there was such a ferment that the Spanish embassy was glad to get away in safety. Many years after, Elizabeth, reminded of it by the opposition to a proposed marriage of her own just as unpopular, wrote to Stafford, her ambassador in France, her reminiscences of it:—"It happened," she said, "in Queen Mary's days, that, when a solemn embassade of five or six at least were sent from tho Emperor and King of Spain, even after her marriage articles were signed and sealed, and the matter divulged, the danger was so near the queen's chamber-door, that it was high time for those messengers to depart without leave taking, and bequeath themselves to the speed of tho river stream, and by water pass by with all possible haste to Gravesend."

Within five days came the startling news that three insurrections had broken out in different quarters of the kingdom. One was a-foot in the midland counties, where the Duke of Suffolk and the Grey family had property and influence. There the cry was for the Lady Jane. Mary had been so completely deceived by the Duke of Suffolk, whom she had pardoned and liberated from the Tower, and in return for which he affected so hearty an approval of her marriage, that she instantly thought of him as the man to put down the other rebellions, and sending for him, found that he and his brothers, Lord Thomas and Lord John Grey, had ridden off with a strong body of horse to Leicestershire, proclaiming Lady Jane in every town through which they passed. They found no response to their cry, a fact which any but the most rash speculators might have been certain of. The Earl of Huntingdon, a relative of the queen's, took the field against the Greys, who by their folly brought certain death to Lady Jane, and defeated them near Coventry, upon which they fled for their lives.

The second insurrection was in the west, under Sir Peter Carew, whose project was to place Elizabeth and Courtenay, Earl of Devon, on the throne, and restore the Protestant religion. These parties, as well as the third under Sir Thomas Wyatt, had consented to act together, and thus paralyse the efforts of Mary, by the simultaneous outbreak in so many quarters. But the miserable folly of their plans became evident at once. They did not even unite in the choice of the same person as their future monarch, and had they put down Mary, must then have come to blows amongst themselves. Carew found Devonshire as indifferent to his call as the Greys had found Leicestershire. Courtenay was to have put himself at their head, but never went; and Carew, Gibbs, and Champernham called on the people of Exeter to sign an address to the queen, stating that they would have no Spanish despot. The people of Devon gave no support to the movement. The Earl of Bedford appeared at the head of the queen's troops. A number of the conspirators were seized, and Carew with others fled to France.

But the most formidable section of this tripartite rebellion was that under Sir Thomas Wyatt. Wyatt was the son of Sir Thomas Wyatt the poet, the friend of Surrey and of Anne Boleyn. He had accompanied his father on an embassy to Spain, where the latter fell into danger of the Inquisition, and he had conceived such a dreadful idea of the bigotry and cruelty of the Spaniards, that, though he was a Papist, and had been one of the foremost to support Mary, and to oppose Northumberland, a relative of his own, he now determined to risk his very life to prevent the establishment of a Spanish prince and Spanish notions in England. He had, therefore, readily entered into the conspiracy with Suffolk and Carew, and undertook to attempt the seizure of the Tower, where Lady Jane and her husband lay, and the possession of London, whilst the other insurgent chiefs raised the country. He unfurled the standard of revolt in Kent, and 1,500 men immediately ranged themselves round it, and 5,000 more declared themselves ready at the first call to march out and join him. He fixed his head-quarters at Rochester, having a fleet of five sail, under his associate Winter, which brought him ordnance and ammunition. Wyatt was only a youth of twenty-three, but he was fall of both courage and enthusiasm, and endeavoured to rouse the people of Canterbury to follow him. There, however, he was not successful, and this cast a damp upon his adherents. Sir Robert Southwell defeated a party of the insurgents under Knevet, and the Lord Abergavenny another party under Isley, and the spirits of his troops began to sink rapidly. Many of his supporters sent to the Council, offering to surrender on promise of full pardon, and a little delay would probably have witnessed the total dispersion of his force.

But on tho 29th of January, tho Duke of Norfolk marched from London with a detachment of the guards under Sir Henry Jerningham. On reaching Rochester they found Wyatt encamped in the ruins of the old castle, and tho bridge bristling with cannon, and with well-armed Kentishmen. Norfolk endeavoured to dissolve tho hostile force by sending a herald to proclaim a pardon to all that would lay down their arms, but Wyatt would not permit him to read the paper. Norfolk then ordered his troops to force the bridge; but this duty falling to a detachment of 500 of the train-bands of the city under Captain Brett, the moment they reached the bridge Brett turned round, and addressed his followers thus:—"Masters, we go about to fight against our native countrymen of England, and our friends, in a quarrel unrightful and wicked; for they, considering the great miseries that are like to fall upon us, if we shall be under the rule of the proud Spaniards, or strangers, are here assembled to make resistance to their coming, for the avoiding the great mischiefs likely to alight not only upon themselves, but upon every of us and the whole realm; wherefore I think no English.