He also tells us that on the same day “was ij hanged upon a jebett in Powles churche yerd; the on [one] a spy of Wyatt, the thodur [the other] was under-shreyff of Leseter, for carryng letturs of the duke of Suffoke and odur thinges.”
[290] Mary was, however, so firmly convinced that this was his object that in the orders to Lieutenants of Counties to proclaim as traitors Henry, Duke of Suffolk, the Carew brothers, Wyatt and others (dated 26th January 1554), they are described as having “threatened her destruction and to advance the Lady Jane Grey and her husband.” These last words are significant, in view of Guildford’s pretensions to regality.
[291] Griffet says: “Le duc de Suffolck fut le premier à découvrir lui-même tous les secrets de la conspiration. Il écrivit sa confession, & la fit remettre à la Reine, en implorant sa clêmence; & il déclara, que les conjurés ne se proposaient rien moins que de mettre Elisabeth sur le trône.” There can be no mistaking the meaning of this statement.
[292] Renard, in a dispatch of the 8th February, as given by Griffet, says indeed that “Jeanne de Suffolck, dont elle [Mary] avait épargné les jours, contre l’avis de l’Empereur Charles-Quint, fut sacrifiée à la nécessité d’ôter aux rebelles, & aux ennemis du Gouvernement, une idole qu’ils étaient fâchée de n’avoir pas maintenue sur le trône. Son mari fut exécuté le même jour.”
Besides, Gardiner says that Suffolk himself bewailed “with impatient dolours not only his own woe, but the calamity his folly had brought on his daughter.” Godwin, however (Rerum Anglicarum Henrico VIII, Edwardo VI et Maria, Annals, p. 217), throws the blame of Jane’s troubles more on her mother than on her father: “Hunc exitum habuit Iana, majorum titulis illustris fœmina, sed virtute et ingenii nobilitate longe illustrior, quæ dum Virtici et imperiosæ matris ambitioni obsequitur ... funestum sibi reginæ sumpsit.”
The consensus of historians, nevertheless, lays the blame on Suffolk’s ill-advised attempt at rebellion. Bishop Burnet, writing in 1680 (History of the Reformation, vol. ii. 437) says: “Indeed the blame of her death was generally cast on her father rather than on the Queen, since the rivalry of a crown is a point of such niceness, that even those who bemoaned her death most could not but excuse the Queen, who seemed to be driven to it, rather from considerations of State, than any resentment of her own.... He [Suffolk] would have died more pitied for his weakness, if his practices had not brought his daughter to her end.”
[293] The Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 50.
[294] Machyn tells us (p. 55) that “The xij day of February was made at every gate in Lundun a new payre of galaus [gallows] and set up ... the xiiijth day of February were hangyd at evere gatt and plasse: in Chepe-syd vj; Algatt j, quartered; at Leydyhall iij; at Bysshope-gatt one, and quartered; Morgatt one; Crepullgatt one; Aldersgate one, quartered ...” and so forth, giving a total of about forty-eight, three being hanged at Hyde Park Corner, but none at Tyburn.
[295] Fuller says he was “earnest yet modest.” Feckenham had been imprisoned by Henry VIII for his adherence to papal supremacy, until Sir Philip Hoby, whom we have seen advocating a Protestant monarch, “borrowed him out of the Tower.”
[296] The Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 54.