De Noailles, of course, denied all that he dared, promised to give entire satisfaction as to the rest, and proceeded forthwith to concoct schemes, by which his promises would be entirely stultified. All that he relates henceforth touching the Queen’s marriage, the punishment of the rebels, and the restoration of the Catholic worship, is coloured by personal animosity, and must be received with caution, his new resentment and annoyance rendering his testimony less trustworthy than before.
On the day after Elizabeth’s arrival at Westminster, the Duke of Suffolk was beheaded on Tower Hill. He confessed his guilt, and expressed a hope that the Queen would forgive him.
“My Lord, her grace hath already forgiven and prayeth for you,” said Dr. Weston, his confessor. “Then,” continued the Duke, “I beseech you all good people, to let me be an example to you all for obedience to the Queen and the magistrates, for the contrary thereof hath brought me to this end.”[428] He called them to witness that he died “a faithful and true Christian, believing to be saved by none other but only by Almighty God through the Passion of his Son Jesus Christ”. His brother Thomas, who was believed to have incited him to rebellion, was also executed, but the Lord John Grey, who was taken with him, was pardoned by the Queen.
At his trial, Wyatt pleaded guilty, and made no defence. He referred his interrogators to his written declaration, and refused to enter into further details. He was condemned to death, but his execution was deferred for a month, in the hope of his giving further information as to the other implicated persons. His accusation of Elizabeth made it necessary that she should be examined, but the result obtained might have been a foregone conclusion. When the Chancellor, with nine members of the Council, went to Westminster, and charged her with complicity in the plot, she replied boldly that she knew nothing of it whatever. Gardiner entreated her for her own sake to throw herself on the Queen’s mercy, and to crave her pardon. But she answered proudly that this would be to confess a crime, and that forgiveness was only extended to the guilty. First, her guilt must be proved, in which case she would follow the Chancellor’s advice.[429] They were obliged to leave without having gained anything by their visit. The councillors were more than ever divided. Those among them who secretly favoured Elizabeth maintained that the legal proof against her was insufficient to justify her being sent to the Tower; the Spanish party were for giving her short shrift. Others again thought that she ought to be closely guarded, but not imprisoned. Mary availed herself of this loophole, and caused each lord of the Council in succession to be asked to undertake the custody of the Princess in his own house. Not one was willing to accept the dangerous office, and when all had refused it, a warrant was made out for her committal to the Tower.[430]
Thoroughly alarmed, and fully expecting to suffer the same fate as her unfortunate mother, Elizabeth denied with oaths and curses that she had ever had any letter from Wyatt, that she had ever written to the French King, or consented to anything that might endanger the Queen’s life. Haughtily she begged those who brought her the news to remember who she was. An hour later, the Earl of Sussex and two other members of the Council dismissed her suite, leaving her only one gentleman, three ladies and two servants. Guards were placed in her antechamber, and in the garden under her windows. The next morning, Saturday, 17th March, the Earl of Sussex and the Marquis of Winchester announced that her barge was in attendance to convey her to the Tower. Her scornful mood having changed to one of deep depression, she entreated to be allowed to wait for the next tide. Lord Winchester answered her tritely, that time and tide waited for no man, whereupon she begged that they would at least permit her to write a few lines to the Queen. Winchester again refused, but the Earl of Sussex, more friendly, gave her leave, and swore that he himself would deliver her letter, and bring her back the answer. She was so long in writing it, that the tide no longer served, and Elizabeth scored her usual point of delay. She obtained, indeed, twenty-four hours respite, for her guards would not risk the midnight tide, for fear of a rescue under cover of the darkness. Mary, extremely displeased, exclaimed with some bitterness that in her father’s time they would not have dared to take upon themselves such disobedience, and vouchsafed no answer to Elizabeth’s letter.
The next day being Palm Sunday, at nine o’clock the warrant was executed, and the Princess conducted through the guards to her barge, which was moored at the water entrance to the palace. Foxe says,[431] “Being come forth into the garden, she did cast her eyes towards the window, thinking to have seen the Queen, which she could not: whereat she said, she marvelled much what the nobility of the realm meant, which in that sort would suffer her to be led into captivity, the Lord knew whither, for she did not,” a remark which, perhaps, savoured of treason more than anything else she allowed to escape her.
According to the chronicler already often quoted:—
“The 18th March, being 1553 [1554], the lady Elizabeth’s grace, the queen’s sister, was conveyed to the Tower, from the court at Westminster, about ten of the clock in the forenoon, by water; accompanying her the Marquis of Northampton [probably a mistake for Winchester] and the Earl of Sussex. There was at the Tower to receive her, the lord Chamberlain. She was taken in at the drawbridge. It is said when she came in, she said to the warders and soldiers, looking up to heaven, ‘Oh Lord, I never thought to have come in here as prisoner; and I pray you all, good friends and fellows, bear me witness, that I come in no traitor, but as true a woman to the Queen’s Majesty as any is now living; and thereon will I take my death’. And so, going a little further, she said to my lord Chamberlain, ‘What, are all these harnessed men here for me?’ And he said, ‘No, Madam’. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know it is so; it needed not for me, being alas! but a weak woman.’ It is said that when she was in, the lord Treasurer and the lord Chamberlain began to lock the doors very straitly; then the Earl of Sussex with weeping eyes said, ‘What will ye do, my lords? What mean ye therein? She was a king’s daughter, and is the queen’s sister; and ye have no sufficient commission so to do; therefore go no further than your commission, which I know what it is.’”[432]
Elizabeth’s trial began five days after her committal. Gardiner, accompanied by nine members of the Privy Council, proceeded to an interrogatory, concerning what had passed between the Princess and Sir James Croft, as to her proposed removal from Ashridge to Donnington. She feigned at first not to know that she had such a house as Donnington, but after a moment’s reflection, said that she did remember having such a place, but that she had never been inside it. Confronted with Croft, she was asked what she had to say of him, and she replied, that she had no more to do with him than with any of the other prisoners in the Tower, declaring with great dignity that if they had done ill, and had offended the Queen’s Majesty, it was their business to answer for it; and she begged that she might not be associated with criminals of that sort.