I thought, when all that was settled, and my dear lady, with her husband by her side, no longer depended so entirely on her Margery for companionship and love, and my beloved, with his work accomplished, had leisure to be happy, he and I might have time to get married, and then we would go together to see my home and my dear old father, Hal and Jack, and, too, Master Montgomery in his parsonage, and the villagers and our servants. After which Sir Hubert would take me to his own beautiful place, Harpton Hall, where we should live together in great happiness and prosperity. But I am glad to think that I always said to myself, 'If the Lord will,' and resolved that, even if things went contrary and we did not have quite such a good time, I would be resigned and thankful for smaller mercies.

But of what was really going to happen I had not the faintest conception.

CHAPTER XXIII
Wyatt's Insurrection

I heard full particulars afterwards of the insurrection, but at the time, shut up in the Tower, knew little of its course.

Sir Thomas Wyatt, though professedly a Romanist, having seen the horrors of the Inquisition in Spain, had risen in revolt against Mary because of her Spanish marriage. He first raised the standard of revolt in Kent, where many joined him, and amongst them Sir Hubert Blair, who thought he could thus best serve Lady Jane, whilst the Duke of Suffolk, who was openly for his daughter, was making a similar attempt in the Midlands, and Sir Peter Carew in the West; the latter's object being to place the Princess Elizabeth on the throne.

At Rochester, where Sir Thomas Wyatt, accompanied by his aide-de-camp, Sir Hubert Blair, encamped in the ruins of the old castle, and held the bridge with cannon and well-armed Kentish men, there was a great scene. The Duke of Norfolk, with a detachment of Guards from London, was to have forced the bridge, but a certain Captain Brett, who was deputed by him to lead five hundred men against it, turning, addressed his followers thus—

'Masters, we are about to fight against our native countrymen of England and our friends, in a quarrel unrightful and wicked; for they, considering the great miseries that are like to fall upon us if we shall be under the rule of the proud Spaniards, or strangers, are here assembled to make resistance to their coming, for the avoiding of the great mischiefs likely to alight not only upon themselves, but upon every one of us and the whole realm, wherefore I think no English heart ought to say against them. I and others will spend our blood in their quarrel.'

When they heard this, his men shouted, 'A Wyatt! A Wyatt!' and, instead of turning their guns against the bridge, turned them against their own Duke of Norfolk's forces.

The duke and his officers fled, and Brett and his men, crossing the bridge, joined Wyatt's soldiers, followed by three-fourths of the queen's troops and more.