Lady Jane Grey and Her Times

by Ida A. Taylor

Hastings temporised. No stranger was yet come who need be suspected. Therefore, if this was their only quarrel, the Queen would be content they should be heard.

“To that I yield,” returned Wyatt warily, “but for my further surety I would rather be trusted than trust.”

In carrying out this principle of caution it was reported that he had pressed his demand for confidence so far as to require that the custody of the Tower, and the Queen’s person within it, should be conceded to him. If this was the case, he can scarcely have felt much surprise that the negotiations were brought to an abrupt conclusion, Hastings replying hotly that before his traitorous conditions should be granted, Wyatt and twenty thousand with him should die. And thus the conference ended.[213]

London was in a ferment. Mayor, aldermen, and many of the citizens went about in armour, “the lawyers pleaded their causes in harness,” and when Dr. Weston said Mass before the Queen on Ash Wednesday he wore a coat of mail beneath his vestments. There had been no need to bid the Spanish ambassadors to depart, those gentlemen having prudently decamped as speedily as possible. Upon February 2 Mary in person proceeded to the Guildhall, and, there meeting the chief amongst the citizens, made them a speech which was an admirable combination of appeal and independence, and showed that if outwardly she bore no resemblance to father or sister the Tudor spirit was alive in her. She had come, she said, to tell them what they already knew—of the treason of the Kentish rebels, who demanded the possession of her person, the keeping of the Tower, and the placing and displacing of her counsellors.

That day marked the crisis in the progress of the insurrection. Mary’s visit to the Guildhall had taken place on February 2. When on the following day Wyatt, leaving Deptford, marched to Southwark the tide had turned. His followers were falling away; no other part of the country was in arms to support him; and his position was becoming desperate. His daring, nevertheless, did not fail. A price had been put upon his head, and, aware of the proclamation, he caused his name to be “fair written,” and set it on his cap. The act of bravado was characteristic of the spirit of the popular leader.

Meantime the measures to be taken against him were anxiously discussed. On the 4th Sir Nicholas Poynings, on duty at the Tower, waited upon the Queen to receive her orders, and to learn whether the ordnance was to be directed upon Southwark, and the houses knocked down upon the heads of Wyatt and his men, quartered in that district.

Mary, to her honour, refused to authorise the drastic mode of attack.

“Nay,” she replied, “that were pity; for many poor men and householders are like to be undone there and killed. For, God willing, they shall be fought with to-morrow.”

The innocent were not to be involved in the destruction of the guilty. Her decision was unwelcome at the Tower. The night before Sir John Bridges had expressed his surprise to the sentinel on duty that the rebels had not yet been fought.

“By God’s mother,” he added, “I fear there is some traitor abroad, that they be suffered all this while. For surely if it had been about my sentry [or beat] I would have fought with them myself, by God’s grace.”