Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/348

328 been said of raising troops, when the need came for them there were none beyond the ordinary guard. The Queen had to rely only on the musters of the city and the personal retainers of the council and the other peers; both of which resources she had but too much reason to distrust. In fact, the council, dreading the use to which the Queen might apply a body of regular troops, had resisted all her endeavours to raise such a body; Paget had laboured loyally for a fortnight, and at the end he assured the Queen on his knees that he had not been allowed to enlist a man. Divided on all other points, the motley group of ministers agreed to keep Mary powerless; with the exception of Gardiner and Paget, they were all, perhaps, unwilling to check too soon a demonstration which, kept within bounds, might prove the justice of their own objections.

The Queen, however, applied to the corJporation of the city, and obtained a promise of five hundred men; she gave the command to the Duke of Norfolk, on whose integrity she knew that she could rely; and, sending a herald to Rochester with a pardon, if the rebels would disperse, she despatched Norfolk, Sir Henry Jerningham, and the young Lord Ormond, to Gravesend without waiting for an answer. The city bands were to follow them immediately. Afraid that Elizabeth would fly before she could be secured, the Queen wrote a letter to her studiously gracious, in which she told her that, in the disturbed state of the