"Whereas it is said abroad that I should accuse my Lady Elizabeth's Grace and my Lord Courtenay; it is not so, good people, for I assure you neither they nor any other now yonder in hold or durance was privy of my rising or commotion before I began."[307]
The words, or the substance of them, were heard by every one. Weston, who attended as confessor, shouted, "Believe him not, good people! he confessed otherwise before the council." "That which I said then I said," answered Wyatt, "but that which I say now is true." The executioner did his office, and Wyatt's work, for good or evil, was ended.
All that the court had gained by his previous confessions was now more than lost. London rang with the story that Wyatt, in dying, had cleared Courtenay and Elizabeth.[308] Gardiner still thundered in the Star Chamber on the certainty of their guilt, and pilloried two decent citizens who had repeated Wyatt's words; but his efforts were vain, and the hope of a legal conviction was at an end. The judges declared that against Elizabeth there was now no evidence;[309] and, even if there had been evidence, Renard wrote to his master, that the court could not dare to proceed further against her, from fear of Lord William Howard, who had the whole naval force of England at his disposal, and, in indignation at Elizabeth's treatment, might join the French and the exiles.[310] Perplexed to know how to dispose of her, the ambassador and the chancellor thought of sending her off to Pomfret Castle; doubtless, if once within Pomfret walls, to find the fate of the second Richard there: but again the spectre of Lord Howard terrified them.
The threatened escape of her sister, too, was but the beginning of the queen's sorrows. On the 17th of April Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was tried at the Guildhall for having been a party to the conspiracy. The confessions of many of the prisoners had more or less implicated Throgmorton. Cuthbert Vaughan, who was out with Wyatt, swore in the court that Throgmorton had discussed the plan of the insurrection with him; and Throgmorton himself admitted that he had talked to Sir Peter Carew and Wyatt about the probability of a rebellion. He it was, too, who was to have conducted Courtenay to Andover on his flight into Devonshire; and the evidence[311] leaves very little doubt that he was concerned as deeply as any one who did not actually take up arms. Sir Nicholas, however, defended himself with resolute pertinacity; he fought through all the charges against him, and dissected the depositions with the skill of a practised pleader; and in the end, the jury returned the bold verdict of "Not guilty." Sir Thomas Bromley urged them to remember themselves. The foreman answered they had found the verdict according to their consciences.
Their consciences probably found less difficulty in the facts charged against Throgmorton than in the guilt to be attached to them. The verdict was intended as a rebuke to the cruelty with which the rebellion had been punished, and it was received as an insult to the crown. The crowd, as Throgmorton left the court, threw up their caps and shouted. The queen was ill for three days with mortification,[312] and insisted that the jurors should be punished. They were arrested, and kept as prisoners till the following winter, when they were released on payment of the ruinous fine of £2000. Throgmorton himself was seized again on some other pretext, and sent again to the Tower. The council, or Paget's party there, remonstrated against the arrest; they yielded, however, perhaps that they might make the firmer stand on more important matters.
Since Elizabeth could not be executed, the court were the more anxious to carry the Succession Bill. Gardiner's first desire was that Elizabeth should be excluded by name; but Paget said that this was impossible.[313] As little could a measure be passed empowering the queen to leave the crown by will, for that would be but the same thing under another form. Following up his purpose, notwithstanding, Gardiner brought out in the House of Lords a pedigree, tracing Philip's descent from John of Gaunt; and he introduced a bill to make offences against his person high treason. But at the second reading the important words were introduced, "during the queen's lifetime;"[314] the bill was read a third time, and then disappeared; and Paget had been the loudest of its opponents.[315]
Beaten on the succession, the chancellor, in spite of Renard's remonstrances, brought forward next his Religious Persecution Bills. The House of Commons went with him to some extent; and, to secure success in some form or other, he introduced three separate measures, either of which would answer his purpose— a bill for the restoration of the Six Articles, a bill to re-enact the Lollard Statute of Henry IV., De Hæretico Comburendo, and a bill to restore (in more than its original vigour) the Episcopal Jurisdiction. The Six Articles had so bad a name that the first bill was read once only, and was dropped; the two others passed the Commons,[316] and, on the 26th of April, the Bishops' Authority Bill came before the Lords. Lord Paget was so far in advance of his time that he could not hope to appeal with a chance of success to his own principles of judicious latitudinarianism; but he determined, if possible, to prevent Gardiner's intended cruelties from taking effect, and he spread an alarm that, if the bishops were restored to their unrestricted powers, under one form or other the holders of the abbey lands would be at their mercy. To allay the suspicion, another bill was carried through the Commons, providing expressly for the safety of the holders of those lands; but the tyranny of the episcopal courts was so recent, and the ecclesiastics had shown themselves uniformly so little capable of distinguishing between right and wrong when the interests of religion were at stake, that the jealousy, once aroused, could not be checked. The irritation became so hot and so general as to threaten again the most dangerous consequences; and Paget, pretending to be alarmed at the excitement which he had raised, urged Renard to use his influence with the queen to dissolve parliament.[317]
Renard, who was only anxious that the marriage should go off quietly, agreed in the desirableness of a dissolution. He told the queen that the reform of religion must be left to a better opportunity; and the prince could not, and should not, set his foot in a country where parties were for ever on the edge of cutting each other's throats. It was no time for her to be indulging Gardiner in humours which were driving men mad, and shutting her ears to the advice of those who could ruin her if they pleased; she must think first of her husband. The queen protested that Gardiner was acting by no advice of hers; Gardiner, she said, was obstinate, and would listen to no one; she herself was helpless and miserable. But Renard was not to be moved by misery. At all events, he said, the prince should not come till late in the summer, perhaps not till autumn, not, in fact, till it could be seen what form these wild humours would assume; summer was the dangerous time in England, when the people's blood was apt to boil.[318]
Gardiner, however, was probably not acting without Mary's secret approbation. Both the queen and the minister especially desired, at that moment, the passing of the Heresy Bill, and Renard was obliged to content himself with a promise that the dissolution should be as early as possible. Though parliament could not meet at Oxford, a committee of Convocation had been sitting there, with Dr. Weston, the adulterous Dean of Windsor, for a president. Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer had been called upon to defend their opinions, which had been pronounced false and damnable. They had been required to recant, and, having refused, they were sentenced (April 20), so far as the power of the court extended, to the punishment of heretics.
Cranmer appealed from the judgment to God Almighty, in whose presence he would soon stand.