Elizabeth was tall and majestic, more gracious than beautiful, pale of complexion, with fine eyes, and hands that were admired for their whiteness and elegance. It was noticed that she knew how to use them effectively.[310]
At the Tower, where according to custom, the Queen was to reside pending her brother’s obsequies, the State prisoners of the two preceding reigns were kneeling on the Green, in front of the scaffold. These were the Duchess of Somerset, who had been in captivity since the execution of her husband; the aged Duke of Norfolk; Edward Courtenay, son of the Marquis of Exeter, beheaded in 1538; Tunstal and Gardiner, the deprived Bishops of Durham and Winchester. Gardiner, in the name of them all, congratulated Mary on her accession, and without complaining of the injustice of their detention expressed their joy at seeing her victorious over her enemies.[311]
“Ye are my prisoners!” exclaimed the Queen, bursting into tears. Embracing them all, she ordered them to be released at once, and took them with her to the royal apartments. Their goods, their rank, their sees were restored. The next day, Gardiner was sworn a member of the Privy Council, and three weeks later, was made Lord Chancellor of England.
The names of twenty-seven persons concerned in the rebellion were handed to the Queen. Of these she struck out sixteen, leaving eleven to be tried. These were again reduced to seven—the Duke of Northumberland, his son the Earl of Warwick, the Marquis of Northampton, Sir John Gates, Sir Henry Gates, Sir Andrew Dudley and Sir Thomas Palmer. The law then took its course, and they were condemned to death. But Mary again intervened; four were reprieved, and three only of the ringleaders, the Duke of Northumberland, Sir John Gates and Sir Thomas Palmer, his chief advisers, were executed. The Emperor urged her in vain to include the Lady Jane in the number of those to be tried for high treason. The Queen spoke warmly in her defence, and declared that she was less guilty than he believed her to be. Usurper though she had been, she was but a tool, and Mary would not have her punished for another’s crime. She had returned to the Tower as a prisoner, along with her husband, but was allowed great freedom within its precincts. The danger of her pretensions was, Mary declared, imaginary, but every precaution should be taken before she was restored to liberty.[312] With unprecedented mildness, the Queen had been inclined to pardon even Northumberland, but Charles put pressure on her to sign his death-warrant. The Duke made no defence at his trial, and on the scaffold admitted his crime, expressed penitence, and declared that he died a member of the Catholic and Roman Church.[313]
Whether Mary was persuaded of Jane’s innocence on the ground that the girl was scarcely a free agent, or whether the letter which Jane wrote to her as a prisoner,[314] turned the balance in her favour, is not clear, but it is certain that the Queen’s treatment of her rival at this time was magnanimous to imprudence, as the sequel showed. As for the other delinquents, no rebellion had ever been quenched with so little effusion of blood. Far otherwise had been Henry’s reprisals after the northern rising, far other the crushing of the insurgents in Edward’s reign. Had the punishment of the rebels rested entirely with Mary, she would have signalised her advent with a full and general amnesty. The Duchess of Suffolk had thrown herself at the Queen’s feet, imploring the pardon and release of her husband, both of which she obtained immediately; but strange as it appears, it is not on record that she even attempted to plead for her daughter.[315]
More stringent measures at the outset would no doubt have averted the serious disturbances of the following year, and afterwards; and the opinion of Charles V., that to punish the authors of sedition was to nip the revolution in the bud, was justified in the event. He had insisted on the execution of Northumberland and his lieutenants, but more than this he had not obtained. The people had little respect or gratitude for a clemency which they did not understand.
FOOTNOTES:
[287] “He (Mr. Huddleston) was highly honoured afterwards by Queen Mary, and deservedly. Such the trust she reposed in him that (when Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen) she came privately to him to Salston, and rid thence behind his servant (the better to disguise herself from discovery) to Framlingham castle. She afterwards made him (as I have heard) her privy councillor and (besides other great boons) bestowed the bigger part of Cambridge Castle (then much ruined) upon him, with the stones whereof he built his fair house in this county” (Fuller, Worthies, i., p. 168).