Mary, as she lamented afterwards to Renard, was unprepared; she was pressed in terms which showed that those who made the request did not intend to be refused—and she consented.[294] The six gentlemen escaped; and, following up this beginning, the council, in the course of the week, extorted from her the release of Northampton, Cobham, and one of his sons, with five others. In a report to the emperor, Renard admitted that, if the queen attempted to continue her course of justice, there would be resistance; and the party of the chancellor, being the weakest, would in that case be overwhelmed. It was the more necessary, therefore, that, by one means or another, Elizabeth should be disposed of. The queen had condescended to apologise to him for her second act of clemency, which she excused as being an Easter custom. It was not for him to find fault, he said that he had replied, if her majesty was pleased to show mercy at the holy season; but it was his duty to remind her that he doubted whether the prince could be trusted with her.
This argument never failed to drive Mary to madness; and, on the other side, Renard applied to Gardiner to urge despatch in bringing Elizabeth to trial: as long as she lived, there was no security for the queen, for the prince, or for religion. Gardiner echoed the same opinion. If others, he said, would go to work as roundly as himself, all would be well.[295]
In this condition of the political atmosphere parliament assembled on the 2nd of April. The Oxford scheme had been relinquished as impracticable. The Lord Mayor informed the queen that he would not answer for the peace of the city in the absence of the court; the Tower might be surprised and the prisoners released; and to lose the Tower would be to lose the crown. The queen said that she would not leave London while her sister's fate was undetermined.[296] The Houses met, therefore, as usual, as Westminster, and the speech from the throne was read in Mary's presence by the chancellor.
Since the last parliament, Gardiner said, the people of England had given proofs of unruly humour. The queen was their undoubted sovereign, and a measure would be submitted to the Lords and Commons to declare, in some emphatic manner, her claim to her subjects' obedience.
Her majesty desiring, further, in compliance with her subjects' wishes, to take a husband, she had fixed her choice on the Prince of Spain, as a person agreeable to herself and likely to be a valuable friend to the realm: the people, however, had insolently and ignorantly presumed to mutiny against her intentions, and, in her affection for the commonwealth, her majesty had consented to submit the articles of the marriage to the approval of parliament.
Again, her majesty would desire them to take into their consideration the possible failure of the blood royal, and adopt necessary precautions to secure an undisturbed succession to the crown. It would be for the parliament to decide whether the privilege which had been granted to Henry VIII. of bequeathing the crown by will might not be, with propriety, extended to her present majesty.[297]
Finally, and at great length, the chancellor spoke of religion. The late rebellion, he said, was properly a religious rebellion: it was the work of men who despised the sacraments, and were the enemies of truth, order, and godliness. A measure would be laid before the legislature for the better restraint of irregular licence of opinion.
The marriage was to pass quietly. Those of the Lords and Commons who persevered in their disapproval were a small minority, and did not intend to appear.[298] The bill, therefore, passed both Houses by the 12th of April.[299] The marriage articles were those originally offered by the emperor, with the English clauses attached, and some explanatory paragraphs, that no room might be left for laxity of interpretation.[300] Lord Bedford and Lord Fitzwalter had already gone to Plymouth, where a ship was in readiness to carry them to Spain. They waited only till the parliamentary forms were completed, and immediately sailed. Lord William Howard would go to sea with the fleet, at his earliest convenience, to protect the passage, and the prince might be expected in England by the end of May. The bill for the queen's authority was carried also without objection. The forms of English law running only in the name of a king, it had been pretended that a queen could not be a lawful sovereign. A declaratory statute explained that the kingly prerogative was the same, whether vested in male or female.[301] Here, however, unanimity was at an end. The paragraph about the succession in the queen's speech being obviously aimed at Elizabeth, produced such an irritation in the council, as well as in parliament, that Renard expected it would end in actual armed conflict.[302]
From the day of Elizabeth's imprisonment Gardiner had laboured to extort evidence against her by fair means or foul.[303] She had been followed to the Tower by her servants. Sir John Gage desired that her food should be dressed by people of his own. The servants refused to allow themselves to be displaced,[304] and, to the distress of Renard, angry words had been addressed to Gage by Lord Howard, so that they could not be removed by force.[305]
The temptation of life having failed, after all, to induce Wyatt to enlarge his confession beyond his first acknowledgments, it was determined to execute him. On the 11th of April he was brought out of his cell, and on his way to the scaffold he was confronted with Courtenay, to whom he said something, but how much or what it is impossible to ascertain.[306] Finding that his death was inevitable, he determined to make the only reparation which was any longer in his power to Elizabeth. When placed on the platform, after desiring the people to pray for him, lamenting his crime, and expressing a hope that he might be the last person to suffer for the rebellion, he concluded thus: