It remained to consign the captives to the universal house of detention. By five o’clock in the afternoon, as the spring day was closing in, Wyatt and five of his comrades had been conducted to the Tower by Jerningham. They arrived by water, and were met at the bulwark by Sir Philip Denny, who greeted the prisoners with words of fierce upbraiding.
“Go, traitor,” he said, as Wyatt passed by, “there was never such a traitor in England.”
Wyatt turned upon him.
“I am no traitor,” he answered. “I would thou should well know thou art more traitor than I; and it is not the part of an honest man to call me so.”
He was right; but courtesy to the defeated was no article of the code of the day. At the Tower Gate Sir John Bridges, the Lieutenant, stood, likewise ready to receive and to revile his prisoners. To each in turn he addressed some varied form of abuse, taking Wyatt, who came last, by the collar “in very rigorous manner,” and shaking him.
“‘Thou villain and unhappy traitor,’ he cried, ... ‘if it were not that the law must justly pass upon thee, I would strike thee through with my dagger.’
“To whom Wyatt made no answer, but, holding his arms under his side, and looking grievously with a grim look upon the said Lieutenant, said, ‘It is no mastery now,’ and so they passed on.”
Thus ended Wyatt’s rebellion. Together with her father’s treason, it had sealed Lady Jane’s fate, and that of the boy-husband who shared her captivity.