There was a singular unanimity upon the subject amongst the citizens of London. It is said that upon the faces of the heralds forced to proclaim the new Queen their discontent was visible;[163] and a curious French letter sent from London at the time states, after mentioning the absence of any acclamation upon the part of the people, that a moment afterwards they had broken out into lamentation, clamour, tears, sighs, sadness, and desolation impossible to describe.
Thus inauspiciously was Lady Jane’s nine days’ reign inaugurated. On a great catafalque in Westminster Abbey the dead boy-King was lying, guarded day and night by twelve watchers until he should be given sepulture. But there was little leisure to attend to his obsequies on the part of the men who had made him their tool, and had staked their lives and fortunes upon the success of their plot. For the present all had gone according to their hopes. “Through the pious intents of Edward, the religion of Mary, the ambition of Northumberland, the simplicity of Suffolk, the fearfulness of the judges, and the flattery of the courtiers”—thus Fuller sums up the causes to which the situation was due—“matters were made as sure as man’s policy can make that good which in itself is bad.” It was quickly to be seen to what that security amounted.
CHAPTER XVII
1553 Lady Jane as Queen—Mary asserts her claims—The English envoys at Brussels—Mary’s popularity—Northumberland leaves London—His farewells.
To enter in any degree into the position of “Jane the Queen” during the brief period when she was the nominal head of the State, the time in which she lived, as well as the prevalent conception of royalty in England, must be taken into the reckoning.
In our own days she would not only have been a mere cipher—as indeed she was—but would have been content to remain such, so far as actual power was concerned. Royalty, stripped of its reality, is largely become a mere matter of show, a part of the pageant of State. In the case of a child of sixteen it would wear that character alone. But in the days of the Tudors a King was accustomed to govern; even in the hands of a minor a sceptre was not a mere symbolic ornament.
And Lady Jane was precisely the person to take a serious view of her duties. Thoughtful, conscientious, and grave beyond her years, she had no sooner found herself a Queen than she had asserted her authority in opposition to that of the man who had invested her with the dignity by announcing her intention of refusing to allow it to be shared by his son—already, it appears by letters from Brussels, recognised there as Prince Consort—and shut up in the gloomy fortress to which she had been taken she was occupied with the thought of her duty to the kingdom she believed herself to be called to rule over, of the necessity of providing for the wants of the nation, and more especially for the future of religion. Whilst, perhaps, all the time there lingered in her mind a misgiving, lifting its head to confront her from time to time with a paralysing doubt, torturing to a sensitive and scrupulous nature; was she indeed the rightful Queen of England?
Mary had lost no time in asserting her claims. On July 9—the day before that of Jane’s proclamation—she had written a letter to the Council from Kenninghall in Norfolk, expressing her astonishment that they had neither communicated to her the fact of her brother’s death, nor had caused her to be proclaimed Queen, and requiring them to perform this last duty without delay. The rebuke reaching London on the morning of January 11 “seemed to give their Lordships no other trouble than the returning of an answer,”[164] which they did in terms of studied insult, reminding her of her alleged illegitimacy, and exhorting her to submit to her lawful sovereign, Queen Jane, else she should prove grievous unto them and unto herself. This unconciliatory document received the signature of every one of the Council, including Cecil, who was afterwards at much pains to explain his concurrence in the proceedings of his colleagues; and Northumberland, as he despatched it, must have felt with satisfaction that it would be difficult for those responsible for the missive to make their peace with the woman to whom it was addressed.
The terms in which the defiance was couched show the little importance attached to the chances that Henry VIII.’s eldest daughter would ever be in a position to vindicate her rights. Once again her enemies had failed to take into account the stubborn justice of the people. Though by many of them Mary’s religion was feared and disliked, they viewed with sullen disapproval the conspiracy to rob her of her heritage. And Northumberland they hated.