Wild tales were afloat, rousing the passions of the angry people to fever-heat. Some reports stated that Edward was still alive; others asserted that the tower and the forts were to be seized and held by an imperialist army; abuse of every kind was directed against the Prince of Spain and his nation. Mary was said to have given her pledge that she would marry no foreigner, and by the breach of this promise she was declared to have forfeited the crown. Fresh schemes were set on foot for a rising in the spring. It does not appear that the substitution of Lady Jane for her cousin was again generally contemplated. That plan had resulted in so complete a failure that it had probably been tacitly admitted that the arrangement would not work. But the eyes of many were turning towards Elizabeth. She was to wed Courtenay, and they were jointly to occupy the throne. The two principally concerned were not likely to have refused to fall in with the project had it seemed to offer a fair chance of success, and France was in favour of it.
“By what I hear,” wrote Noailles, “it will be by my Lord Courtenay’s own fault if he does not marry her, and she does not follow him to Devonshire,”—the selected centre of operations—“but the misfortune is that the said Courtenay is in such fear that he dares undertake nothing. I see no reason that prevents him save lack of heart.”
Courtenay was in truth not the stuff of which conductors of revolutions are made. Gratitude and loyalty would not have availed to keep him true to Mary, and in able hands he might have become the instrument of a rebellion. But Gardiner found no difficulty in so playing on his apprehensions as to lead him to divulge the plots that were on foot; and his revelations, or betrayals, whichever they are to be called, precipitated the action of the conspirators. If their enterprise was to be attempted, no time must be lost.[210]
On January 20 it became known that Devonshire was in arms, “resisting the King of Spain’s coming,” and that Exeter was in the hands of the insurgents. By the 25th the Duke of Suffolk, with his two brothers, Lord John and Lord Leonard Grey, had fled from his house at Sheen, and gone northwards to rouse his Warwickshire tenants to insurrection. It was currently reported that he had narrowly escaped being detained, a messenger from the Queen having arrived as he was on the point of starting, with orders that he should repair to Court.
“Marry,” said the Duke, “I was coming to her Grace. Ye may see I am booted and spurred ready to ride, and I will but break my fast and go.”
Bestowing a present upon the messenger, he gave him drink, and himself departed, no one then knew whither.
That same day tidings had reached the Council that Kent had risen, Sir Thomas Wyatt at its head, with Culpepper, Cobham, and others, alleging, as their sole motives, resistance to the Prince of Spain, and the removal of certain lords from the Council Board. Sir John Crofts had proceeded to Wales to call upon it to join the insurrectionary movement.
The country being thus in a turmoil the two persons who should have taken the lead and upon whom much of the success of the insurgents depended were playing a cautious game. Courtenay was at Court, and Elizabeth remained at Ashridge to watch the event, no doubt prepared to shape her course accordingly. A letter addressed to her by her partisans, counselling her withdrawal to Dunnington, as to a place of greater safety, had been intercepted by the authorities; and she had received an invitation, or command, to join her sister at St. James’s, where, it was significantly added, she would be more secure than either at Ashridge or Dunnington. On the score of ill-health she disobeyed the summons, fortifying the house, and assembling around it some numbers of armed retainers.
From a photo by Emery Walker after a painting by Joannes Corvus in the National Portrait Gallery.