Lady Jane Grey and Her Times

by Ida A. Taylor

The unanimous capitulation of the Council, in which he was by absence precluded from joining, sealed Northumberland’s fate. The centre of interest shifts from London to the country, whither he had gone to meet the forces gathering round Mary. The ragged bear was at bay.

Arundel and Paget had posted northwards on the night following the revolution in London to inform the Queen of the proceedings of the Council and to make their peace with the new sovereign; Paget’s success in particular being so marked that the French looker-on reported that his favour with the Queen “etait chose plaisante à voir et oir.” The question all men were asking was what stand would be made by the leader of the troops arrayed against her. That Northumberland, knowing that he had sinned too deeply for forgiveness, would yield without a blow can scarcely have been contemplated by the most sanguine of his opponents, and the singular transmutation taking place in a man who hitherto, whatever might have been his faults or crimes, had never been lacking in courage, must have taken his enemies and what friends remained to him by surprise.

“Bold, sensitive, and magnanimous,” as some one describes him,[180] he was to display a lack of every manly quality only explicable on the hypothesis that the incessant strain and excitement of the last three weeks had told upon nerves and spirits to an extent making it impossible for him to meet the crisis with dignity and valour.

Hampered with orders from the Council framed in Mary’s interest and with the secret object of delaying his movements until her adherents had had time to muster in force, he did not adopt the only course—that of immediate attack—offering a possibility of success, and had retreated to Cambridge when the news that Mary had been proclaimed in London reached him. From that instant he abandoned the struggle.

On the previous day the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Doctor Sandys, had preached, at his request, a sermon directed against Mary. Now, Duke and churchman standing side by side in the market-place, Northumberland, with the tears running down his face, and throwing his cap into the air, proclaimed her Queen. She was a merciful woman, he told Sandys, and all would doubtless share in her general pardon. Sandys knew better, and bade the Duke not flatter himself with false hopes. Were the Queen ever so much inclined to pardon, those who ruled her would destroy Northumberland, whoever else were spared.

The churchman proved to have judged more accurately than the soldier. An hour later the Duke received letters from the Council, indicating the treatment he might expect at their hands. He was thereby bidden, on pain of treason, to disarm, and it was added that, should he come within ten miles of London, his late comrades would fight him. Could greater loyalty and zeal in the service of the rising sun be displayed?

Fidelity was at a discount. His troops melted away, leaving their captain at the mercy of his enemies. In the camp confusion prevailed. Northumberland was first put under arrest, then set again at liberty upon his protest, based upon the orders of the Council that “all men should go his way.” Was he, the leader, to be prevented from acting upon their command? Young Warwick, his son, was upon the point of riding away, when, the morning after the scene in the market-place, the Earl of Arundel arrived from Queen Mary with orders to arrest the Duke.

What ensued was a painful spectacle, Northumberland’s bearing, even in a day when servility on the part of the fallen was so common as to be almost a matter of course, being generally stigmatized as unworthy of the man who had often given proof of a brave and noble spirit.[181] As the two men met, it may be that the Duke augured well from the Queen’s choice of a messenger. If he had, he was to be quickly undeceived. Arundel was not disposed to risk his newly acquired favour with the sovereign for the sake of a discredited comrade, and Northumberland might have spared the abjectness of his attitude; as, falling on his knees, he begged his former friend, for the love of God, to be good to him.

“Consider,” he urged, “I have done nothing but by the consents of you and all the whole Council.”

The plea was ill-chosen. That Arundel had been implicated in the treason was a reason the more why he could not afford to show mercy to a fellow-traitor; nor was he in a mood to discuss a past he would have preferred to forget and to blot out. It is the unfortunate who are prone to indulge in long memories, and the Earl had just achieved a success which he was anxious to render permanent. Disregarding Northumberland’s appeal, he turned at once to the practical matter in hand. He had been sent there by the Queen’s Majesty, he told the Duke; in her name he arrested him.