Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/402

382 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.'

At nine o'clock the next morning—it was Sunday, Palm Sunday—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 sprung 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