The conspirators panicked when Courtenay babbled all and began their armed rebellion months before they’d planned to.
The gentlemen leading it—the Duke of Suffolk, Sir Peter Carew, Sir James Crofts, and Thomas Wyatt—had rather counted on their countrymen rising with them. However, the farmers and yeomen they tried to recruit didn’t wish to risk their lives against their queen’s soldiers and stayed home. Only Wyatt was able to raise any sort of force at all.
The other conspirators gave up quickly, but Wyatt resolutely marched to London with his army. Wyatt must have been gifted with a silver tongue, because Mary’s troops sent out to stop him turned around and joined him. This large force then made its way toward Mary, who waited at Whitehall Palace for news.
I heard the details of the entire affair from Colby later. At the time, Elizabeth and I shivered in the cold, dark manor at Ashridge, knowing little.
Apparently, Mary, in desperation, made her way to the City of London—whose people at first were fervently on the side of Wyatt’s rebels—and asked for a personal audience with the Lord Mayor and the guilds.
The City had always intrigued me, one square mile surrounded by high walls, within which the people had their own laws, their own guards, their own lives, so different and removed from any other place in London, or indeed, England. Even the monarch lived outside it, apart.
If the men of the City opened the gates and admitted Wyatt’s soldiers, Mary would be finished, and she knew it.
Wyatt would take Mary captive—and then what? Would he dare execute the true monarch? Or would he imprison her in the country, as her mother had been imprisoned, stripped of her rank and wealth, a condition in which Mary had spent much of her young life?
Mary must have known all this, because her speech, as I heard of it later, was impassioned.
I am your queen, she began to the gentlemen of the Guildhall. At my coronation, I was wedded to the realm and the laws of the same. The spousal ring I have on my finger, which never hitherto was, nor hereafter shall be, left off.
I imagined her standing in the lofty hall, perhaps on a bench or platform so she might be seen over all heads, lifting her hand so that her coronation ring flashed in the light.
You promised your allegiance and obedience to me. And I say to you, on the word of a prince, I cannot tell how naturally the mother loveth the child, for I was never the mother of any. There would be pain in this statement, unfeigned. But certainly, if a prince and governor may as naturally and earnestly love her subjects, as the mother doth love the child, then assure yourselves, that I being your lady and mistress, do as earnestly and tenderly love and favor you. I doubt not but we shall give these rebels a short and speedy overthrow.
She’d paused for a moment, then added, for the few unmoved: I never intended to marry outside the realm, but by my council’s consent and advice. I assure you now, I shall never marry anyone but he with whom all my subjects shall be content.
They cheered her, those men of the City, bolstered by her words and her fervent speech.
Mary had swept from the hall, surrounded by her gentlemen and ladies, to return to Whitehall and wait to discover whether her plea had any effect.
On Ash Wednesday, at the end of February, Wyatt led his forces into Southwark, where he meant to cross northward over the Thames. The City, its people won by Mary’s eloquence and her bravery at facing down the Guildhall, closed off London Bridge to him.
Wyatt was forced to march his troops far to the west to cross the river, and so from there made his way to Whitehall.
Mary had been sitting in the gallery above the Holbein gate when Wyatt’s men stormed it. I heard that Mary’s yeomen guards had fled their posts before the enemy, allowing Wyatt and his soldiers to batter the gates unopposed.
Only Mary herself stood fast, sharply telling those in the room to stay and defend her person.
As it happened, Mary’s guards did not have to fight to the last man. The gates below remained closed, strong enough to hold against the onslaught.
Wyatt continued past Whitehall toward the City, with Mary’s soldiers, more heartened now, chasing after them.
Thus, Wyatt found himself squeezed between Ludgate, which had been closed and barred by the Lord Mayor’s command, and Mary’s soldiers behind him. He had no choice but to surrender.
The rebels were led to the Tower to await Mary’s judgment.
Elizabeth paced her chamber in agitation, sunlight flashing on the gold flowers embroidered on her gown.
“She tells me it is for my safety,” Elizabeth snarled to Aunt Kat, who had just read aloud the letter Mary had sent Elizabeth.
The rebellion was over. Wyatt reposed in the Tower along with the Duke of Suffolk and other noblemen who’d wanted Elizabeth on the throne and Mary off it.
Just before the fighting had begun, Mary had sent a pleasantly worded letter to Ashridge, inviting Elizabeth to join her at court, where she would be safe.
She’d sent a second letter, now that the uprising had been quelled, repeating the request. Elizabeth might be in more danger, Mary claimed, if any who had escaped arrest decided to retaliate against both queen and princess.
“It is nonsense,” Elizabeth scoffed. “Run to me, sweet sister, and I will keep you safe. In a nice, locked room in the Tower, no doubt. I hear that Jane Grey’s father has returned there to his beloved daughter and son-in-law Guildford. Mary was a bloody idiot to let Suffolk out, and he was a greater idiot to get himself tossed back in. She cannot let them live now, you know.”
I thought of Jane sitting innocently in her prison, by all reports happy that people had left her alone with her reading. She was guilty of nothing but obeying difficult parents.
