"Forasmuch as you have desired so simple a woman to write in so worthy a book, good Master Lieutenant, therefore I shall, as a friend, desire you, and as a Christian, require you, to call upon God to incline your heart to his laws, to quicken you in his way, and not to take the word of truth utterly out of your mouth. Live still to die, that by death you may purchase eternal life, and remember how Methuselah, who, as we read in the Scriptures, was the longest liver that was of a man, died at the last; for, as the Preacher saith, there is a time to be born and a time to die; and the day of death is better than the day of our birth. Yours, as the Lord knoweth, as a friend, Jane Dudley."[254]
Her husband was also to die, and to die before her. The morning on which they were to suffer he begged for a last interview and a last embrace. It was left to herself to consent or refuse. If, she replied, the meeting would benefit either of their souls, she would see him with pleasure; but, in her own opinion, it would only increase their trial. They would meet soon enough in the other world.
He died, therefore, without seeing her again. She saw him once alive as he was led to the scaffold, and again as he returned a mutilated corpse in the death-cart. It was not wilful cruelty. The officer in command had forgotten that the ordinary road led past her window. But the delicate girl of seventeen was as masculine in her heart as in her intellect. When her own turn arrived, Sir John Brydges led her down to the green; her attendants were in an agony of tears, but her own eyes were dry. She prayed quietly till she reached the foot of the scaffold, when she turned to Feckenham, who still clung to her side. "Go now," she said; "God grant you all your desires, and accept my own warm thanks for your attentions to me; although, indeed, those attentions have tried me more than death can now terrify me."[255] She sprung up the steps, and said briefly that she had broken the law in accepting the crown; but as to any guilt of intention, she wrung her hands, and said she washed them clean of it in innocency before God and man. She entreated her hearers to bear her witness that she died a true Christian woman; that she looked to be saved only by the mercy of God and the merits of his Son: and she begged for their prayers as long as she was alive. Feckenham had still followed her, notwithstanding his dismissal. "Shall I say the Miserere psalm?" she said to him.[256] When it was done, she let down her hair with her attendants' help, and uncovered her neck. The rest may be told in the words of the chronicler:—
"The hangman kneeled down and asked her forgiveness, whom she forgave most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the straw, which doing, she saw the block. Then she said, I pray you despatch me quickly. Then she kneeled down, saying, Will you take it off before I lay me down? and the hangman answered No, Madam. She tied a kerchief about her eyes; then, feeling for the block, she said, What shall I do; where is it? One of the bystanders guiding her thereunto, she laid her head down upon the block, and stretched forth her body, and said, Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And so ended."[257]
The same day Courtenay was sent to the Tower, and a general slaughter commenced of the common prisoners. To spread the impression, gibbets were erected all over London, and by Thursday evening eighty or a hundred bodies[258] were dangling in St. Paul's Churchyard, on London Bridge, in Fleet Street, and at Charing Cross, in Southwark and Westminster. At all cross-ways and in all thoroughfares, says Noailles, "the eye was met with the hideous spectacle of hanging men;" while Brett and a fresh batch of unfortunates were sent to suffer at Rochester and Maidstone. Day after day, week after week, commissioners sat at Westminster or at the Guildhall trying prisoners, who passed with a short shrift to the gallows. The Duke of Suffolk was sentenced on the 17th; on the 23rd he followed his daughter, penitent for his rebellion, but constant, as she had implored him to be, in his faith. His two brothers and Lord Cobham's sons were condemned. William Thomas, to escape torture, stabbed himself, but recovered to die at Tyburn. Lord Cobham himself, who was arrested notwithstanding his defence of his house, Wyatt, Sir James Crofts, Sir William St. Lowe, Sir Nicholas Arnold, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, and, as the council expressed it, "a world more," were in various prisons waiting their trials. Those who were suspected of being in Elizabeth's confidence were kept with their fate impending over them—to be tempted either with hopes of pardon, or by the rack, to betray their secrets.[259]
But, sooner or later, the queen was determined that every one who could be convicted should die,[260] and beyond, and above them all, Elizabeth. Elizabeth's illness, which had been supposed to have been assumed, was real, and as the feeling of the people towards her compelled the observance of the forms of justice and decency, physicians were sent from the court to attend upon her. On the 18th of February they reported that she could be moved with safety; and, escorted by Lord William Howard, Sir Edward Hastings, and Sir Thomas Cornwallis, she was brought by slow stages, of six or seven miles a day, to London.[261] Renard had described her to the emperor as probably enceinte through some vile intrigue, and crushed with remorse and disappointment.[262]
To give the lie to all such slanders, when she entered the city, the princess had the covering of her litter thrown back; she was dressed in white, her face was pale from her illness, but the expression was lofty, scornful, and magnificent.[263] Crowds followed her along the streets to Westminster. The queen, when she arrived at Whitehall, refused to see her; a suite of rooms was assigned for her confinement in a corner of the palace, from which there was no egress except by passing the guard, and there, with short attendance, she waited the result of Gardiner's investigations. Wyatt, by vague admissions, had already partially compromised her, and, on the strength of his words, and the discovery of the copy of her letter in the packet of Noailles, she would have gone direct to the Tower, had the lords permitted. The emperor urged instant and summary justice both on her and on Courtenay; the irritation, should irritation arise, could be allayed afterwards by an amnesty.[264] The lords, however, insisted obstinately on the forms of law, the necessity of witnesses, and of a trial; and Renard watched their unreasonable humours with angry misgivings. It was enough, he said, that the conspiracy was undertaken in Elizabeth's interests; if she escaped now, the queen would never be secure.[265] In fact, while Elizabeth lived, the prince could not venture among the wild English spirits, and Charles was determined that the marriage should not escape him.
As soon as the rebellion was crushed, Egmont, attended by Count Horn, returned to complete his work. He brought with him the dispensations in regular form. He brought also a fresh and pressing entreaty that Elizabeth should be sacrificed. An opportunity had been placed in the queen's hand, which her duty to the church required that she should not neglect; and Egmont was directed to tell her that the emperor, in trusting his son in a country where his own power could not protect him, relied upon her honour not to neglect any step essential to his security.[266] Egmont gave his message. The unhappy queen required no urging; she protested to Renard, that she could neither rest nor sleep, so ardent was her desire for the prince's safe arrival.[267] Courtenay, if necessary, she could kill; against him the proofs were complete; as to Elizabeth, she knew her guilt; the evidence was growing; and she would insist to the council that justice should be done.
About the marriage itself, the lords had by this time agreed to yield. Courtenay's pretensions could no longer be decently advanced, and Gardiner, abandoning a hopeless cause, and turning his attention to the restoration of the church, would consent to anything, if, on his side, he might emancipate the clergy from the control of the civil power, and re-establish persecution. Two factions, distinctly marked, were now growing in the council—the party of the statesmen, composed of Paget, Sussex, Arundel, Pembroke, Lord William Howard, the Marquis of Winchester, Sir Edward Hastings, and Cornwallis: the party of the church, composed of Gardiner, Petre, Rochester, Gage, Jerningham, and Bourne. Divided on all other questions, the rival parties agreed only no longer to oppose the coming of Philip. The wavering few had been decided by the presents and promises which Egmont brought with him from Charles. Pensions of two thousand crowns had been offered to, and were probably accepted by the Earls of Pembroke, Arundel, Derby, and Shrewsbury; pensions of a thousand crowns were given to Sussex, Darcy, Winchester, Rochester, Petre, and Cheyne; pensions of five hundred crowns to Southwell, Waldegrave, Inglefield, Wentworth, and Grey;[268] ten thousand crowns were distributed among the officers and gentlemen who had distinguished themselves against Wyatt. The pensions were large, but, as Renard observed, when Charles seemed to hesitate, several of the recipients were old, and would soon die; and, as to the rest, things in England were changing from day to day, and means of some kind would easily be found to put an early end to the payments.[269]
Unanimity having been thus secured, on the day of Egmont's arrival Renard demanded an audience of the lords, and in the queen's presence requested their opinion whether the condition of England allowed the completion of the contract. The life of the prince of Spain was of great importance to Europe; should they believe in their hearts that he would be in danger, there was still time to close the negotiation. The rebellion having broken out and having failed, the lords replied that there was no longer any likelihood of open violence. Arundel hinted, again, that the prince must bring his own cook and butler with him;[270] but he had nothing else to fear, if he could escape the French cruisers.