[276] This refers to the trained bands of the Tower Hamlets mentioned, whose headquarters were in the Tower, and took their titles from the districts in which they were raised.

[277] Machyn’s Diary, p. 42. The paragraph ends with a reference to their attendance at Mass: “And at the same tym after was send for my lord mer and the aldermen and the cheyffest of the craftes in London, and dyvers of the counsell, and ther was sed mas [Mass] a-for [before] the Duke and the rest of the prisoners.” Was it the sudden arrival of the news that Northumberland was about to return to Catholicism that occasioned the postponement of the execution, in the hope that the Queen, touched by his conversion, might spare him? Most historians, however, assign the 20th as the date of the recantation, which would mean of course that it took place before the postponement of the execution, described by Machyn as having occurred on the 21st.

[278] A very quaint account of the Duke of Northumberland’s execution, published in Paris in 1558 by a French priest named Stephen Perlin, contains, though full of inaccuracies, some details not to be found in other contemporary reports. “The afore-mentioned prisoners,” says he, “were taken to the Tower. The mob called the milor Notumbellant [sic] vile traitor, and he eyed them furiously with looks of resentment. Two days afterwards [an error; he entered the Tower on 25th July, and was tried on 18th August] he was taken by water in a little bark to Ousemestre [Westminster], a Royal palace, principally to indict and try him; his trial was not long, for it did not last more than fourteen days at most [there is no reason to suppose it lasted so long]; and he, the Duke of Suphor [Suffolk], and the milor Arondelle were condemned by an arrest of the Council to be beheaded in an open space before the castle of the Tower; and they had all three [they were really executed at widely different periods; see the text] the pain of seeing one under the hands of a hangman, before whom a whole kingdom had trembled, which, reader, was a lamentable spectacle. This hangman was lame of a leg, for I was present at the execution, and he wore a white apron like a butcher. This great lord made great lamentations and complaints at his death, and said this prayer in English, throwing himself on his knees, looking up to Heaven, and exclaiming tenderly, ‘Lorde God mi fatre prie fort ous poore siners nond vand in the hoore of our teath,’ [so in the original: it seems to be a ludicrous mixture of the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary] which is to say, in French, ‘Lord God my Father, pray for us men and poor sinners, and principally in the hour of our death.’ After the execution you might see little children gathering up the blood which had fallen through the slits in the scaffold on which he had been beheaded. In this country the head is put upon a pole, and all their goods confiscated to the Queen.”

[279] The beauty and quantity of the roses in the Tower gardens is made particular mention of in contemporary documents.

[280] Wriothesley says the cannonading and gun-firing on this occasion was positively deafening.

[281] A rare French book entitled Nouveaux Eclaircissements sur l’Histoire de Marie Reine d’Angleterre, says of this interview: “Elle [Mary] lui [Renard] dit, qu’elle ne pouvait se résoudre à faire mourir Jeanne de Suffolck [Lady Jane Grey], qu’on lui avait assuré, qu’avant d’épouser le fils du duc de Nortumberland, elle avait été promise en mariage à un autre par un Contrat obligatoire, qui rendait son second mariage nul; d’où Marie concluait, que Jeanne n’était pas véritablement belle-fille du duc de Nortumberland. Elle ajouta qu’elle n’avait eu aucune part à l’entreprise de ce duc, & qu’elle se ferait conscience de la faire mourir, puisqu’elle était innocente. Simon Renard lui répliqua qu’il était à craindre, qu’on n’eût imaginé cette promesse obligatoire pour lui sauver la vie, & qu’il fallait au moins la retenir prisonnière, parce qu’il y aurait beaucoup d’inconvénients à lui rendre la liberté.... La Reine répondit ... qu’à l’égard de Jeanne de Suffolck, on ne la mettrait pas en liberté, sans avoir pris toutes les précautions nécessaires, pour qu’il n’en pût résulter aucun inconvénient. Le Lieutenant d’Amont [i.e. Renard] ayant rendu compte à l’Empereur de cette conversation, ce Prince insista de nouveau dans sa réponse ... de punir sans miséricordes tous ceux qui avaient entrepris de lui enlever la Couronne, & ceux qui avaient contribué à la mort du Roi.” [The latter phrase evidently refers to the widespread but unauthenticated idea that Edward VI had been poisoned by Northumberland.] The author or compiler of the book from which this is taken was one Père Griffet, who flourished in the eighteenth century, and having discovered a number of Simon Renard’s dispatches in the Royal Library at Besançon, wrote this work in answer to David Hume’s attack on Queen Mary: it was published at Amsterdam in 1766. There is no copy of it in the British Museum.

[282] Poinet, the Protestant Bishop of Winchester, says in truth that “those lords of the Council who had been the most instrumental at the death of Edward VI, in thrusting royalty upon poor Lady Jane, and proclaiming Mary illegitimate, were now the sorest forcers of men, yea, became earnest councillors for that innocent lady’s death.” See Strype, vol. iii. part I, p. 141.

[283] Sir Richard Morgan, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Lady Jane’s judge, was a Catholic. The date of his birth is not known. He was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn on 31st July 1523, and called to the Bar in 1529. From 1545 to 1547 and again in 1553 he represented Gloucester in the House of Commons. He was arrested and confined in the Fleet Prison on 24th March 1551, for the offence of attending Mass in Princess Mary’s chapel, but was soon released with a caution. In 1553 he joined Mary’s party at Kenninghall, and when the Queen came to her own he was knighted [2nd October 1553]. Later in the same year he was placed on the commission to inquire into Bishop Tunstal’s appeal; and in November he tried and passed sentence of death on Lady Jane Grey and others. Sir Richard Morgan retired from the Bench in October 1555. In the following year (according to Foxe, Book of Martyrs, iii. p. 37) “Judge Morgan, that gave the sentence against hir [Jane], shortly after fell mad, and in hys raving cryed continuallye to have the ladie Jane taken away from him, and so ended his life.” His death is mentioned in Holinshed, 1577 edition, p. 1733. Machyn (Diary, p. 106) records Morgan’s funeral in the following terms: “The ij day of June was bered at sant Magnus at London bryge ser Richerd Morgayn knyght, a juge and on [one] of the preve consell unto the nobull Quen Mare, with a harold [herald] of armes bayryng ys cott armur, and with a standard and a penon of armes and elmett, sword, and targatt; and iiij dosen of skochyons, and ij whytt branchys and xij torchys and iiij gret tapurs, and xxiiij pore men in mantyll ffrysse gownes, and mony in blake; and master chansseler of London

[284] This description of the trial is mainly derived from the original documents in the Baga de Secretis, Pouch xxiii., in the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, London; from various contemporary descriptions of previous and subsequent State trials; and from ancient and contemporary engravings of similar scenes. There is, unfortunately, an utter lack of documentary evidence of a personal character connected with this trial, for, unlike these of the Queens Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, it was not of a domestic character, and there was neither cross-examination of witnesses or prisoners nor defence: the facts were of public knowledge and as such handed to the jury, who, after considering them, gave the only verdict possible under the circumstances, guilty. Thus, this celebrated trial is divested of those many touches of dramatic interest and human pathos which characterise the records of the trials of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. Machyn’s account of Jane’s trial is very brief, and is in part destroyed. He says (p. 48): “[The 13th of November were arraigned at Guildhall Doctor Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord] Gylfford Dudlay, the sune of the Duke of Northumberland, and my lade Jane ys wyff, the doythur of the Duke of Suffoke-Dassett, and the Lord Hambrosse Dudlay, and the Lord Hare Dudlay, the wyche lade Jane was proclamyd Queen; they all v wher cast for to dee [die].”

There is a contemporary account of the procession to the Guildhall, which runs as follows: “The xiijth daie of November were ledd out of the Tower on foot, to be arrayned, to yeldhall, with the axe before theym, from theyr warde [prison], Thomas Cranmer, archbushoppe of Canterbury, between ... [blank].