The Bishop yielded. He may have agreed with Renard. At all events, the Queen being determined, and recognising that he was unable to deter her from the measure upon which she had decided, he took the prudent step of putting himself on her side. His opposition removed, Renard was able to inform his master, on December 17, that Mary had received him in open daylight, had informed him that the necessity for secrecy was at an end, and that she regarded her marriage as a thing definitely and irrevocably fixed.[207]
CHAPTER XXII
1553-1554 Discontent at the Spanish match—Insurrections in the country—Courtenay and Elizabeth—Suffolk a rebel—General failure of the insurgents—Wyatt’s success—Marches to London—Mary’s conduct—Apprehensions in London, and at the palace—The fight—Wyatt a prisoner—Taken to the Tower.
When the year 1553 drew towards its close there was nothing to indicate that any catastrophe was at hand. The crisis appeared to be past and no further danger to be apprehended. Northumberland and his principal accomplices had paid the penalty of their treason. Suffolk, with lesser criminals, had been allowed to escape it; the rest of the confederates had been practically pardoned. If some were still in confinement it was understood to be without danger to life or limb. In the Tower Lady Jane and her husband lay formally under sentence of death, but the conditions of their captivity had been lightened; on December 18 Lady Jane was accorded “the liberty of the Tower,” and was permitted to walk in the Queen’s garden and on the hill; Guilford and his brother—Elizabeth’s Leicester—were allowed the liberty of the leads in the Bell Tower. Both Northampton and young Warwick—who did not long survive his enfranchisement—had been released. No further chastisement seemed likely to be inflicted in expiation of the late attempt to keep Mary out of her rights.
Yet discontent was on the increase. As early as November steps had been taken to induce Courtenay to head a new conspiracy. He was timid and faint-hearted, and urged delay, and nothing had, so far, come of it. It would be well, he said, advocating a policy of procrastination, to wait to be certain that the Queen was determined upon the Spanish match before taking hazardous measures to oppose it.[208]
Thus Christmas had found the country ostensibly at peace, and the prisoners in the Tower with no reason to fear any change for the worse in their condition. On the following day the thunder of the cannon discharged as a welcome to the Emperor’s ambassadors sounded in their ears, and was, though they were ignorant of it, the prelude of their destruction. The arrival of envoys expressly charged with the marriage negotiations put the matter beyond doubt; nor was England in a mood to submit passively to a union it hated and feared.
By January 2 the Counts of Egmont and Laing and the Sieur de Corriers had reached the capital; landing at the Tower, where they were greeted with a salute from the guns, and met by the Earl of Devonshire, who escorted them through the City. “The people, nothing rejoicing, held down their heads sorrowfully.” When on the previous day the retinue of the Spanish envoys had ridden through the town, more forcible expression had been given to public opinion, and they had been pelted with snowballs.[209]
Matters were pressed quickly on. By January 13 the formal announcement of the unpopular arrangement, with its provisions, was made by Gardiner in the Presence-chamber at Westminster to the lords and nobles there assembled; hope could no longer be entertained that the Queen would be otherwise persuaded. “These news,” adds the Tower diarist, “although they were not unknown to many and very much disliked, yet being now in this wise pronounced, was not only credited, but also heavily taken of sundry men; yea, and almost each man was abashed, looking daily for worse matters to grow shortly after.”
They did not look in vain. The unpopularity of the Spanish match was the direct cause of the insurrections which soon broke out. Indirectly it was the cause of the death of Lady Jane Grey.