Sir Thomas looked at Isoult as he passed, seeing her eyes fixed on him; but it was the look of a stranger to a stranger.
The storm broke now. Few days passed unmarked by fresh arrests. The phrase “the Queen” had almost insensibly passed from Jane to Mary. But for a little while yet the crisis was political, not religious. When the danger was over, and before Mary reached her metropolis, the scene was shifted, and the first Protestant arrest took place. And so sudden and unexpected was the blow, that it fell upon the Gospellers like a thunderbolt. Thirty hours had barely elapsed since her meeting with Sir Thomas Palmer, when Isoult, coming down into the parlour, heard her husband’s voice say sorrowfully—“Ay, this is the beginning of sorrows.”
“Is there any more news?” cried Isoult, fearfully; for fresh news then meant bad news.
“The worst we have had yet,” he said; “the Bishop of London is committed to the Tower.”
“And that all suddenly, with scantly a minute’s warning,” added Dr Thorpe.
“Woe worth the day!” she wailed. “Ay, thou mayest say so,” answered he. “God grant this be not the first step of a longer and dreader persecution than we have yet known.”
On Friday the Duke of Suffolk was brought to the Tower, where his hapless daughter remained a prisoner. But on the Monday following, Suffolk was released.
“To ease the Tower dungeons, which must now be choke-full,” suggested Dr Thorpe; “or it may be the Queen thought him a sely (harmless, simple) fellow, not worth the turning of an axe edge.”
The Queen’s grand entry into London took place on the 3rd of August. There was no need for any in the Minories to go far to see her, for she came to them, riding down Shoreditch and in at Aldgate. She was preceded by a guard of seven hundred and forty “velvet coats;” then rode that “honourable man” my Lord of Arundel, bearing in his hand the sword of state; then (after reaching Aldgate) the Lord Mayor; then the Queen, royally arrayed, riding by herself on a richly-caparisoned barb, Sir Anthony Browne bearing up her train. What were the thoughts of that long-persecuted woman, now in her turn to become a persecutor? Then followed her sister, the Lady Elizabeth. What, too, were her thoughts? After the royal sisters rode Elizabeth Stafford, wife of the imprisoned Duke of Norfolk, and Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter, mother of the imprisoned Edward Courtenay. Ladies and gentlemen followed to the number of a hundred and eighty. Lastly came the guard, with a crowd of men from Northampton, Buckingham, and Oxford shires, all in armour, and the peers’ servants. The number of horsemen, we are assured, was about ten thousand.
And when the Queen came to the Tower, there, beside the gate, kneeling upon the Tower green, were the old prisoners of her father and brother, the old Duke of Norfolk, and Dr Stephen Gardiner, and the Duchess of Somerset, and the young Lord Courtenay, who had scarcely ever been out of the Tower in his life. They, kneeling there, saluted her; and no sooner had the Queen alighted, than she went to them and kissed them, and said, “These are my prisoners.”