Lady Jane Grey and Her Times

by Ida A. Taylor

HENRY GREY, DUKE OF SUFFOLK, K.G.

The hopes built by the insurgents upon the general discontent throughout the country were doomed to disappointment. It was one thing to disapprove of the Queen’s choice; it was quite another to take up arms against her. Devonshire proved cold; most of the leaders there were seized, or compelled to make their escape to France; Crofts had been pursued to Wales, and was arrested before he had time to rally any support in the principality.

Suffolk had done no better in the Midlands. Authorities are divided as to his intentions. By Dr. Lingard it is considered uncertain whether he meant to press Elizabeth’s claims or to revive those of his daughter. With either upon the throne the dominance of the Protestant religion would have been ensured, and, unlike Northumberland, Suffolk was sincere and honest in his attachment to the principles of the Reformation. Other writers, however, assert categorically that he caused Lady Jane to be proclaimed at his halting-places as he went north; and the sequel seems to make it probable that she had been once more forced into a position of dangerous prominence.

Whatever may have been the exact nature of the scheme he propounded, the country made no response to his appeal; after a skirmish near Coventry he gave up hopes of any immediate success, disbanded his followers, and, betrayed by a tenant upon whose fidelity he had believed he could count, fell into the hands of those in pursuit of him. By February 10 he had gone to swell the numbers of the prisoners in the Tower.

The rising in Kent had alone answered in any degree to the expectations of its promoters. Drawn into the conspiracy, if his own assertions are to be credited, by Courtenay, Wyatt had become the most conspicuous leader of the insurrection known by his name. He was well fitted for the post. Brave, skilful, and secret, he was, says Noailles, “un gentilhomme le plus vaillant et assuré que j’ai jamais ouï parler”; and whether or not he had been deserted by the man to whom it was due that he had taken up arms, he was not disposed to submit to defeat without a struggle.

Fixing his headquarters at Rochester, he had gathered together a body of some fifteen thousand men, and was there found by the Duke of Norfolk, sent at the head of the Queen’s forces against him. The utmost enthusiasm prevailed amongst the insurgents, and when a herald arrived in Rochester commissioned by the Duke to proclaim a pardon for all who would consent to lay down arms, “each man cried that they had done nothing wherefore they should need any pardon, and that quarrel which they took they would die and live in it.”[211] Sir George Harper was in fact the sole rebel who accepted the proffered boon.

Worse was to follow. At the first encounter of the royal troops with the Kentish men Captain Bret, leading five hundred Londoners, went over to the rebels, explaining in a spirited speech the grounds for his desertion, the miseries which might be expected to befall the nation should the Spaniards bear rule over it, and expressing his determination to spend his blood “in the quarrel of this worthy captain, Master Wyatt.”[212]

It was an ominous beginning to the struggle, and at the applause greeting Bret’s announcement, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Ormond, and Jerningham, Captain of the Guard, fled. Wyatt, taking instant advantage of the situation, rode in amongst the Queen’s troops, crying out that any who desired to join him should be welcome and that those who wished might depart.

Most of the men accepted the alternative of throwing in their lot with Wyatt and his company, leaving their leaders to return without them to London. “Ye should have seen,” adds the diarist, from whom these details and many others of this episode are taken, “some of the Guard come home, their coats turned, all ruined, without arrows or string in their bow, or sword, in very strange wise; which discomfiture, like as it was very heart-sore and displeasing to the Queen and Council, even so it was almost no less joyous to the Londoners and most part of others.”

With the capital in this temper, the juncture was a critical one. Wyatt was marching on London, and who could say what reception he would meet with at the hands of the discontented populace? The fact that he was encountered at Deptford by a deputation from the Council, sent to inquire into his demands, is proof of the apprehensions entertained. The interview did not end amicably. Flushed with victory, Wyatt was not disposed to be moderate. To Sir Edward Hastings, who asked the reason why, calling himself a true subject, he played the part of a traitor, he answered boldly that he had assembled the people to defend the realm from the danger of being overrun by strangers, a result which must follow from the proposed marriage of the Queen.