Mary could afford to show mercy. On August 3 she made her triumphal entry into the capital which had proved so loyal to her cause, riding on a white horse, with the Earl of Arundel bearing before her the sword of state, and preceded by some thousand gentlemen in rich array.
Elizabeth was at her side—Elizabeth, who had learnt wisdom since the days, nearly five years ago, when she had compromised herself for the sake of Seymour. During the crisis now over, she had shown both prudence and caution, playing in fact a waiting game, as she looked on at the contest between her sister and Northumberland, and carefully abstaining from taking any side in it, until it should be seen which of the two would prove victorious. To her, as well as to Mary, a summons had been sent as from her dying brother; more wary than her sister, she detected the snare, and remained at Hatfield, whilst Mary came near to falling a prey to her enemies. At Hatfield she continued during the ensuing days, being visited by commissioners from Northumberland, who offered a large price, in land and money, in exchange for her acquiescence in Edward’s appointment of Lady Jane as his successor. If Elizabeth loved money, she loved her safety more; and returned an answer to the effect that it was with her elder sister that an agreement must be made, since in Mary’s lifetime she herself had neither claim nor title to the succession. Leti,[186] representing her as regarding Lady Jane as a jeune étourdie—the first and only time the epithet can have been applied to Suffolk’s grave daughter—states that she indignantly expostulated with Northumberland upon the wrong done to herself and Mary. She is more likely to have kept silence; and it is certain that an opportune attack of illness afforded her an excuse for prudent inaction. When Mary’s cause had become triumphant she had recovered sufficiently to proceed to London, meeting her sister on the following day at Aldgate, and riding at her side when she made her entry into the capital.
From a photo by Emery Walker after a painting attributed to F. Zuccaro.
QUEEN ELIZABETH.
The two presented a painful contrast: Mary prematurely aged by grief and care, small and thin, “unlike in every respect to father or mother,” says Michele, the Venetian ambassador, “with eyes so piercing as to inspire not only reverence, but fear”; Elizabeth, now twenty, tall and well made, though possessing more grace than beauty, with fine eyes, and, above all, beautiful hands, “della quale fa professione”—which she was accustomed to display.
Her entry into the City made, Mary proceeded, according to ancient custom, and as her unwilling rival had done three weeks before, to the Tower, where a striking scene took place. On her entrance she was met by a group of those who, imprisoned during the two previous reigns, awaited her on their knees. Her kinsman, Edward Courtenay, was there—since he was ten years old he had known no other home—and the Duchess of Somerset, widow of the Protector, with the old Duke of Norfolk, father to Surrey, Tunstall, the deprived Bishop of Durham, and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. In Mary’s eyes some of these were martyrs, suffering for their fidelity to the faith for which she had herself been prepared to go to the scaffold; for others she felt the natural compassion due to captives who have wasted long years within prison walls; and, touched and overcome by the sight of that motley company, she burst into tears.
“These are my prisoners,” she said, as she bent and kissed them.
Their day was come. By August 11 Gardiner was reinstated in Winchester House, which had been appropriated to the use of the Marquis of Northampton, now perhaps inhabiting the Bishop’s quarters in the Tower. The Duke of Norfolk, the Duchess of Somerset, Courtenay, were all at liberty. Bonner was once more exercising his functions as Bishop of London. But their places in the old prison-house were not left vacant: fresh captives being sent to join those already there. Report declared—prematurely—that sentence had been passed on Northumberland, Huntingdon, Gates, and others. Pembroke, notwithstanding the zealous share he had taken in proclaiming Mary Queen, as well as Winchester and Darcy, were confined to their houses.
All necessary measures had been taken for the security of the Government. It was time to think of the dead boy lying unburied whilst the struggle for his inheritance had been fought out. In the arrangements for her brother’s funeral Mary displayed a toleration that must have gone far to raise the hopes of the Protestant party, awaiting, in anxiety and dread, enlightenment as to the course the new ruler would pursue with regard to religion. Permitting her brother’s obsequies to be celebrated by Cranmer according to the ritual prescribed by the reformed Prayer-book, she caused a Requiem Mass to be sung for him in the Tower in the presence of some hundreds of worshippers, notwithstanding the fact that, according to Griffet, “this was not in conformity with the laws of the Roman Church, since the Prince died in schism and heresy.”[187]