Lady Jane Grey and Her Times

by Ida A. Taylor

“Away, away! a barge, a barge!—let the Queen be placed in safety!” was the cry.

Again Mary was to show that she was a Tudor. She would not beat a retreat before rebels. Where, she inquired, was the Earl of Pembroke? and receiving the answer that he was in the field, “Well then,” she said, “fall to prayer, and I warrant you that we shall have better news anon, for my lord will not deceive me, I know well. If he would, God will not, in Whom my chief trust is, Who will not deceive me.”

Though it was well to have confidence in God, men with arms in their hands would have liked to use them, and the pensioners entreated Sir Richard Southwell, in authority within the palace, to have the gates opened that they might try a fall with the enemy; else, they threatened, they would break them down. It was too much shame that the doors should be shut upon a few rebels.

Southwell was quite of the same mind; and, interceding with Mary, obtained her leave for the pensioners to have their way, provided they would not go out of her sight, since her trust was in them—a command she reiterated as, the gates being thrown open, the band marched under the gallery, where she still kept her place. It was not long before her confidence in the commander of the royal troops was justified, and news was brought that put an end to all fear. Wyatt was taken.

At the head of that body of his men who had been allowed to clear the enemy’s lines, he had ridden on towards the City, had passed Temple Bar and Fleet Street, till Ludgate was reached. There he halted. He had kept his tryst, fulfilled the pledge he had given, and knocked, as he had promised, at the gate. Let them open to him; Wyatt was there—successful so long, he may have thought there was magic in the name—Wyatt was there; the Queen had granted their requests.

The City remained unmoved; and, in terms of insult, Sir William Howard refused him entrance.

“Avaunt, traitor,” he said, barring the way, “thou shalt not come in here.”

It was the last blow. The poor chance that the City might have lent its aid had constituted the single remaining possibility of a retrieval of the fortunes of the insurrection. That vanished, the end was inevitable. London had blustered, had expressed its detestation for the Spanish match, had paraded its Protestantism; it was now plain that it had not meant business, and the man who had taken it at its word was doomed.

A strange little scene followed—a scene forming an interlude, as it were, in the tumult and excitement of the hour. It may be that the effects of the strain and fatigue of the last weeks, of the hopes and fears that had filled them, of the march of the night before, unlightened by any genuine anticipation of victory, were suddenly felt by the man who had borne the burden and heat of the day. At any rate, turning without further parley, he made his way back to the Bel Savage Inn, and there “awhile stayed, and, as some say, rested him upon a seat.” Sitting there, trapped by his enemies, in “the shirt of mail, with sleeves very fair, velvet cassock, and the fair hat of velvet with broad bone-work lace” he had worn that day, he may have looked on and seen the future bounded by a scaffold. Then, rousing himself, he rose, and returned by the way he had come, until Temple Bar was reached.

Though the combat was there renewed, all must have known that further resistance was vain, and at length, yielding to a remonstrance at the shedding of useless blood, Wyatt consented to acknowledge his defeat and to yield himself a prisoner to Sir Maurice Berkeley. He had fought the battle of many men who had taken no weapon in hand to support him. When false hopes had at one time been entertained of his success “many hollow hearts rejoiced in London at the same.” But scant sympathy will have been shown to the vanquished.