The House of Tudor (41 page)

It was a long time since London had been besieged and ‘much noise and tumult was everywhere’ as shops were shuttered, market stalls hastily dismantled and weapons, rusty from long disuse, unearthed from store. Children gazed wide-eyed at the Lord Mayor and his aldermen riding about the streets in unaccustomed battle array, ‘aged men were astonished’ and many women wept for fear. The Queen had refused to allow the Tower guns to be turned on the rebels in case the innocent inhabitants of Southwark might suffer and after three days’ uneasy stalemate Wyatt withdrew his army from ‘the bridge foot’. They marched up-river to Kingston, where they crossed to the northern bank and turned eastward again. But the steam had gone out of them. They were tired and hungry, and too much time had been wasted. Still they came trudging on through the western suburbs, and by eleven o’clock on the morning of Ash Wednesday, 7 February they had reached Knightsbridge. There followed some rather indecisive skirmishing with the royalist forces, commanded by the Earl of Pembroke, around St. James’s and Charing Cross and some panic at Whitehall when, in the general turmoil, a cry of treason was raised within the precincts of the palace as a rumour spread that Pembroke had gone over to the enemy. ‘There’, remarked one observer, ‘should ye have seen running and crying of ladies and gentlewomen, shutting of doors, and such a screeching and noise as it was wonderful to hear.’ But although her very presence chamber was full of armed men, the Queen stood fast. Earlier in the day her barge had been ordered for a hasty retreat to the Tower, but Mary had changed her mind, sending word that ‘she would tarry to see the uttermost’. Now, with the gunfire from Charing Cross clearly audible and ‘divers timorous and cold-hearted soldiers’ begging her to escape while she could, her grace would not stir a foot out of the house. She asked for the Earl of Pembroke and was told he was in the field. ‘Well then’, answered the Queen, ‘fall to prayer, and I warrant you we shall hear better news anon; for my lord will not deceive me I know well.’

On this occasion at least, her confidence was not misplaced. Wyatt and a handful of followers got through Temple Bar and on down Fleet Street, but found Ludgate barred and strongly held by Lord William Howard, the Lord Admiral. It was the end for Wyatt. He himself had ‘kept touch’, as he said, but his friends in the city had failed him. He sat for a while in the rain on a bench outside the Belle Sauvage Inn and then, realizing it was hopeless, turned back towards Charing Cross. Fighting flared again briefly as Pembroke’s forces came up and the men round Wyatt prepared to sell their lives dearly, but the bloodshed was stopped by Norroy herald who approached Wyatt and begged him to surrender, pointing out that further resistance was useless. Wyatt, exhausted and confused, hesitated a moment and then yielded.

The immediate danger was over, but the Queen’s troubles were only just beginning. Either she must bow to the will of the people violently expressed and abandon her marriage plans, or she must stand firm. Mary, hurt, angry and bewildered, chose to stand firm and this meant that she could no longer afford the luxury of showing mercy. The first victim of the new hard-line policy was inevitably Lady Jane Grey. Innocent she might have been of complicity in Northumberland’s treason, innocent she undoubtedly was of complicity in Wyatt’s rebellion - none of this altered the fact that her continued existence now represented an unacceptable danger to the state. Her own father’s behaviour had made this abundantly clear. The Duke of Suffolk, who owed his life and liberty entirely to the Queen’s generosity, had shown his gratitude by attempting to raise the Midlands and had been deeply involved with Wyatt. Jane had actually worn the crown, she had been named as heir by the late King (who now wore a Protestant halo), and had been publicly proclaimed. What was more likely than that she might be used again as the figurehead of a Protestant plot? Few people urged this view more strongly than men like Arundel, Winchester and Pembroke, themselves so recently prominent Protestant plotters and now increasingly anxious that the living reminder of their past indiscretions should be obliterated. Reluctantly Mary was forced to agree that Jane would have to die, but though she had not been able to save her cousin’s life, the Queen was determined to make a last minute effort to save her soul and sent Dr. Feckenham, Abbot of Westminster, to see what he could do with this obdurate heretic.

The six months which had passed since her brief enthronement had not been unhappy ones for Jane. She had been living in the house of Partridge, the Gentleman Gaoler, with pleasant enough quarters fronting on to Tower Green. She was allowed three women servants and a page to wait on her and had been treated with respectful consideration by Partridge and his wife. Nobody was bullying her. She was free of the oppressive demands of her husband, her parents and her in-laws. She had her books and leisure for study and the Queen’s promise that one day she would be released. Now all that was over and she had only a few days left to prepare for eternity. Nevertheless, she received Feckenham graciously and they enjoyed several stimulating debates on such topics as the dogma of transubstantiation and the scriptural number of sacraments. But when it was hinted that she could, even now, save her life if she would embrace the Catholic religion, the offer was flatly rejected. Jane had poured indignant scorn on the Duke of Northumberland’s abject apostasy - ‘I pray God, I nor no friend of mine die so.’ Unlike her arch-enemy, she would never forsake her faith for love of life; that would be the ultimate shame for this brilliant, vital sixteen-year-old with everything to live for. All the same, she accepted Feckenham’s offer to accompany her to the scaffold and parted from him with some regret for, since he was irretrievably damned, they could not look forward to resuming their discussions in the hereafter. Jane was, in fact, rather disturbed by the realization that she had come dangerously near to liking a Catholic priest; that she had found him sympathetic, intelligent and cultivated - rather more so than a good many Protestants she had known. Perhaps it was just as well for her peace of mind that she had so little time to brood on the worrying implications of this discovery.

The last two days of her life were busy ones. She must choose a suitable dress to die in and nominate two members of her small suite to witness her death and ‘decently dispose’ of her body. Her speech from the scaffold must be drafted, polished and written out for subsequent publication. There were farewell letters to be written, too, and farewell presents to be chosen. Her sister Katherine got her Greek Testament - ‘it will teach you to live and learn you to die’ - together with a long letter of spiritual exhortation, wasted on featherheaded Katherine. To her father, now awaiting his own execution and suffering from belated pangs of remorse, Jane sent a message of comfort, though her outraged sense of justice impelled her to add a reminder that her death had been hastened by one ‘by whom my life should rather have been lengthened’. There was no letter for her husband, who was to die with her. The Queen had directed that the young couple were to be allowed to meet to say goodbye, but Jane refused the proffered indulgence. Guildford was an irrelevance now and, in any case, they would soon be meeting ‘in a better place’. She might find him more congenial there.

The executions were to take place on 12 February. Guildford’s on Tower Hill, Jane’s, as befitted a princess of the blood, privately on the Green - from Partridge’s house she would have had an excellent view of her scaffold being erected ‘over against the White Tower’. At about ten o’clock in the morning Guildford was brought out of his prison in the Beauchamp Tower and Jane, who had stationed herself at her window, saw the procession leave. She waited obstinately for its return and presently the cart containing the carcase of that tall, strong boy who had wanted her to make him a king, rattled past below her on its way to St. Peter’s. The sight moved her perhaps more than she had expected and those standing near heard her murmur Guildford’s name and something about ‘the bitterness of death’. Now it was her turn, and she emerged on the arm of the Lieutenant, Sir John Brydges. Her two attendants, Nurse Ellen and Mrs. Tilney, were in tears but Jane herself was dry-eyed and perfectly composed, her prayer-book open in her hand. She climbed the steps of the scaffold and turned to make her speech to the invited audience which had gathered to see her die.

Jane did not waste words. She admitted again that she had done wrong in accepting the crown but again declared her innocence ‘touching the procurement and desire thereof’. She begged those present to witness that she died a good Christian woman and that she looked to be saved ‘by none other mean, but only by the mercy of God in the merits of the blood of his only son Jesus Christ’. ‘And now, good people’, she ended, ‘while I am alive, I pray you to assist me with your prayers.’ Even in that last dreadful moment she had the strength to remain true to her faith and reject the age-old comfort of prayers for the dead. She knelt and repeated the fifty-first Psalm, the Miserere, in English, Feckenham beside her following her in Latin. Now there were just the formalities to be gone through. She rose to her feet, handed her gloves and handkerchief to Mrs. Tilney and her prayer-book to John Brydges’ brother and began to untie the fastenings of her gown. The executioner stepped forward but Jane, not realizing perhaps that his victim’s outer garments were the hangman’s perquisite, shrank back and ‘desired him to leave her alone’. Nurse Ellen and Mrs. Tilney helped her to undress and gave her ‘a fair handkercher to knit about her eyes’. Now the executioner was kneeling to ask and receive forgiveness, and there was nothing left to do but make an end. She tied the blindfold over her eyes. The world vanished and she was alone and groping in the darkness, crying ‘What shall I do? Where is it?’ Someone came forward to guide her and ‘she laid her down upon the block and stretched forth her body and said: “Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit”‘. The axe swung and blood spouted obscenely over the scaffold, soaking the straw and spattering the bystanders.

Sometime later that day the mangled corpse of Henry VIII’s great-niece was thrust unceremoniously under the stones of St. Peter-ad-Vincula, between the remains of two Queens - Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. The debt incurred in the chapel at Cluny thirty-nine years before had been repaid at last.

12: IN HONOUR OF WORTHY PHILIP

Then he [Philip] addressed the Spanish lords who were about him, and told them they must at once forget all the customs of Spain, and live in all respects after the English fashion, in which he was determined to begin and show them the way; so he ordered some beer to be brought to him, and drank of it.

Although Simon Renard could reflect with satisfaction on the virtual extinction of the house of Suffolk, he would not feel quite easy in his mind until two more heads had rolled, those of ‘the two persons most able to cause trouble in the realm’ – Courtenay and Elizabeth. Not that the ambassador anticipated any difficulty over this. As he told the Emperor, ‘at present there is no other occupation than the cutting off of heads’, and now that the Queen had at last realized the folly of showing mercy to her enemies, she was ‘absolutely determined to have strict justice done’. Courtenay was already back in the Tower and Elizabeth would soon be joining him.

Throughout the recent crisis Elizabeth had remained holed up at Ashridge, suffering, so she said, from such a cold and headache as she had never felt before. On 25 January, the day after Wyatt entered Rochester, the Council had written summoning the princess to Court for her own safety, in case ‘any sudden tumult’ should arise in the neighbourhood of Ashridge. But Elizabeth had replied that she was far too ill to travel. All the same, rumours were flying about that she was planning to move further away from London, to Donnington Castle, a semi-fortified house near Newbury; that Ashridge was being provisioned for a siege and that Elizabeth was gathering troops – her household, it was said, was now eating in a week what normally lasted a month. Stephen Gardiner, convinced that the French ambassador was heavily involved with Wyatt, had resorted to highway robbery on one of de Noailles’ couriers and the resultant haul had included a copy of Elizabeth’s last letter to the Queen on its way to France by diplomatic bag. It therefore seemed reasonable to deduce that the Queen’s heir was in secret correspondence with the emissaries of a foreign power. Just how important a part she had played in Wyatt’s conspiracy remained to be seen. Her name had never been openly invoked but there could be no doubt that she, if anyone, stood to gain from its success. Now it had failed, she had some explaining to do.

Mary, already deeply suspicious of her sister’s convenient ‘illness’, sent two of her own physicians to examine the patient and report on her condition, and on 10 February the medical team was reinforced by a commission headed by Lord William Howard, Elizabeth’s maternal great-uncle. The doctors having pronounced her fit to travel, the commissioners felt justified in requiring her, in the Queen’s name and all excuses set apart, to be ready to leave with them on the following day. The invalid herself was found to be ‘very willing and conformable’, but afraid that her weakness was so great that she would not be able to endure the journey without peril of life. Elizabeth, aware that the peril lay not in the journey but Its destination, begged for a further respite - ‘until she had better recovered her strength’. But when it was politely but firmly made clear that the time for such delaying tactics was over, she gave in with becoming meekness.

Although, for obvious reasons, she was making the most of it, there is no doubt that her illness on this occasion was perfectly genuine. From the description of her symptoms - her face and limbs were so distended that she was ‘a sad sight to see’ -Elizabeth appears to have been suffering from acute nephritis and it has been suggested that she may have had an attack of scarlet fever, of which inflammation of the kidneys is sometimes a complication. But however great her physical discomfort, it can scarcely have compared with her mental anguish. The situation she had been dreading ever since Mary’s accession had become a reality and there could be no disguising the fact that she stood in mortal danger.