Lady Jane Grey and Her Times

by Ida A. Taylor

Underhyll, a man of resource, had a plan to propose.

“Let us go to Newgate,” he suggested. He thought himself secure of an entrance there into the city. At the worst, he had acquaintances within the prison—like most men at that day—having recently been in confinement there. The door of the keeper of the gaol was without the gate, and Underhyll entertained no doubts of finding a hospitable reception in his old quarters. Throckmorton, it was true, declared at first that he would almost as soon die in the street as seek so ill-omened a refuge; but in the end the two proceeded thither, and, a friend of Underhyll’s being fortunately in command of the guard placed outside the gate, the wanderers were permitted to enter the City.

Whilst consternation and alarm were felt at the palace at the tidings of Wyatt’s approach, the rebel leader himself must have been aware that the game had been played and lost. Yet he kept up a bold front, and refused to acknowledge that he was beaten.

“Twice have I knocked, and not been suffered to enter,” he was reported to have said. “If I knock the third time I will come in, by God’s grace.”

They were brave words. An incident of his march to Kingston nevertheless sounds the note of a consciousness of impending defeat. Meeting, as he went, a merchant of London who was known to him, he charged him with a greeting to his fellow-citizens. “And say unto them from me that when liberty and freedom was offered them they would not accept it, neither would they admit me within their gates, who for their freedom and the disburthening of their griefs and oppression by strangers would have frankly spent my blood in that their cause and quarrel; ... therefore they are the less to be bemoaned hereafter when the miserable tyranny of strangers shall oppress them.”

It may be that by some amongst the men to whom the message was sent his words were remembered thereafter.

Still the insurgents pushed on. By nine in the morning Knightsbridge was reached. Disheartened, weary, and faint for lack of food, they were in no condition to stand against the Queen’s troops. But the mere fact of their vicinity was disquieting to those in no position to form a correct estimate of their strength or weakness, and when Underhyll returned to the palace he found confusion and turmoil there.

His men were stationed in the hall, which was to be their special charge. Sir John Gage, with part of the guard, was placed outside the gate, the rest of the guard were within the great courtyard; the Queen occupying the gallery by the gatehouse, whence she could watch what should befall.

This was the disposition of the defenders, when suddenly a body of the rebels made their way to the very gates of the palace. A struggle took place; Gage and three of the judges who had been with him retreated hurriedly within the gates, Sir John, who was old, stumbling in his haste and falling in the mire. Within all was in disorder. The gates had clanged to behind Gage, his soldiers, and the men of law, as they gained the shelter of the courtyard. Without the rebels were using their bows and arrows. The guard stationed in the outer court, attempting to make good their entrance to the hall, were forcibly ejected by the gentlemen pensioners in charge of it. Poor Gage—“so frighted that he could not speak to us”—and the three judges, also in such terror that force would have been necessary to keep them out, were alone admitted to the comparative safety it afforded.

There was in truth little reason for alarm. The manœuvre decided upon during the night had been executed. The Queen’s troops, Pembroke at their head, had deliberately permitted Wyatt to break through their lines, and, with some hundreds of his men, to proceed eastward. Behind him the enemy had closed up, and he was separated from the main body of the rebels, thus left leaderless to be engaged by the royal forces. The Queen’s orders had been successfully carried out. But to the anxious watchers in the palace the affair may have worn the aspect of a defeat, if not of a treason, and there were not wanting those who suspected Pembroke of a betrayal of his trust. A shout was raised that all was lost.