CHAPTER 45
The King of France … is fitting out his best ships, so that before Easter arrives there shall be such a tumult in England as never was seen.1
—RENARD TO THE EMPEROR, DECEMBER 11, 1553
IN LATE NOVEMBER 1553, A GROUP OF CONSPIRATORS, LED BY SIR Thomas Wyatt, a Kentish gentleman and the son of the poet of the same name; Sir James Croft, the head of a Marches family; and Sir Peter Carew, a soldier and Devonshire landowner, met to discuss the overthrow of the Marian government. Their plan would see a four-pronged rising in Kent, the Midlands, the Southwest, and the Welsh Marches, followed by a march on London. Mary would be deposed and the Spanish marriage thwarted; Elizabeth and Edward Courtenay would be married and both placed on the throne.
The rising was timed for Palm Sunday, March 18, to coincide with the start of Philip’s journey to England. It was a scheme backed by the French in what was a final attempt to thwart the Spanish marriage. As Henry II wrote dismissively, the conspirators “have to do only with a woman who is badly provided with good counsel and men of ability, so it should be easy for them to guard against discovery if they are prudent enough and have blood in their nails.”2
By the new year reports had spread of a “traitorous conspiracy” fostered by “certain lewd and ill-disposed persons.”3 Sir Peter Carew’s return to Devon during the Christmas festivities raised suspicions, which seemed to be confirmed when he failed to obey a summons to attend the Privy Council.4 On January 18, Renard informed Mary that a French fleet was assembling off the Normandy coast and pressed her to take immediate steps to protect herself.5 Mary ordered that troops be raised and an oath of loyalty be administered to each member of the royal household “in order to ascertain the real feelings of each one.” As the oath requesting “obedience and fidelity to his Highness” was read out, “all raised their hand.” The same was done with the mayor, magistrates, aldermen, and men of law of the city, who “did not openly show any opposition.”6 Circulars were sent out across the country with copies of the treaty’s provisions and orders to proclaim them, “lest rebels be inspired under the pretence of misliking this marriage, to rebel against the Catholic religion and divine service within this our realm, and to take from us that liberty which is not denied to the meanest woman in the choice of husband.”7
On the twenty-first, Courtenay confessed his role in the affair to Gardiner. As Renard reported in a letter to the emperor, Courtenay had been approached by certain individuals who had sought to influence him “where religion and the marriage were concerned.” However, “he had never paid any attention to them.” Three days later, the details were revealed and the plot began to unravel.8 The rebels were forced into action two months earlier than expected. Three of the anticipated risings failed. Carew fled to France, and the duke of Suffolk, who was to have led the rising in Leicestershire just weeks after he was pardoned for his support of Northumberland’s coup, was arrested and taken to the Tower. Sir Thomas Wyatt, meanwhile, succeeded in raising a substantial force in Kent.
ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, Wyatt raised his standard at Maidstone with 3,000 men and issued a proclamation declaring the realm to be in imminent danger. He appealed to the townsmen to “join with us,” maintaining that he meant the queen no harm “but better counsel and councillors” to preserve liberty against the Spaniards.9 He declared he had taken up arms solely for the love of his country, fearing that the Spanish match would reduce the realm to slavery, and called upon “every good Englishman” to help him. The Spaniards had “already arrived at Dover,” he said, and were “passing upward in London, in companies of ten, four and six, with harness and arqubusers, and marions, with matchlight.”10 By Thursday the twenty-fifth, Wyatt had taken Rochester for the rebels.
The queen was at Whitehall when she heard of Wyatt’s proclamation, and a band of citizens was quickly drawn together under the command of the eighty-year-old Thomas, duke of Norfolk.11 On Sunday, the twenty-eighth, Norfolk set out for Rochester with a detachment of the Guard and five hundred city whitecoats, accompanied by one of the queen’s heralds.
Upon reaching Wyatt’s forces, the herald pronounced that all rebels who would desist from their purpose would be pardoned. With great shouts the rebels declared “they had done nothing whereof they should need any pardon.” A commander with the city whitecoats, Captain Alexander Brett, addressed his men, telling them, “Masters, we go about to fight against our native countrymen of England and our friends in a quarrel unrightful and partly wicked”; the rebels were assembled to prevent Englishmen from becoming “slaves and villeins,” to protect against Spanish designs “to spoil us of our goods and lands, ravish our wives before our faces, and deflower our daughters in our presence.” Many of the whitecoats deserted, proclaiming “We are all Englishmen!” and expressing fear at the prospect of rule by the Spaniards.12
Norfolk and the remnant of his forces retreated to London. One chronicler wrote, “You should have seen some of the guard come home, their coats torn, all ruined, without arrows or string in their bow, or sword, in very strange ways.”13
The desertion of the city whitecoats threw into question the loyalty of the whole of the capital. Wyatt’s forces were rumored to be near, moving along the banks of the Thames toward Blackheath and Greenwich. Guns were set at each of the city gates, and a watch was kept day and night. The queen sent privy councillors Sir Edward Hastings and Sir Thomas Cornwallis to establish the cause of the commotion. If it was a question of the Spanish marriage, they were to point out that it was the duty of true subjects to sue by petition and not by force. If the rebels would lay down their arms, Hastings and Cornwallis were to offer to negotiate.14
They encountered Wyatt at Dartford, but he dismissed their conciliatory overtures, declaring that he would not lay down arms before he had secured control of queen and capital, and proceeded to march on London. “I am no traitor,” he declared, “and the cause whereof I have gathered the people is to defend the realm from our overrunning by Strangers; which follows, this Marriage taking place.”15
The Privy Council was divided as to how to protect the queen’s person. Mary had been urged to withdraw to Windsor or the Tower but chose to remain at Westminster with a guard of 500 men, well armed and with all the necessary provision for defense. “She even asked to go and fight herself; that however was not permitted to her.”16 Instead she put her faith in Londoners to defend her. On the thirty-first a further proclamation was issued, condemning Wyatt and his company as “rank traitors.”17 The livery companies were informed that 2,000 men were needed for the defense of the city, and every householder was instructed to “raise for his family … on pain of death” and arm immediately for the defense of London “and not elsewhere at their peril.”18
MEANWHILE, MARY took the initiative. At three in the afternoon of February 1, she ordered her horse to be brought to her and rode with her armored guard, heralds, trumpeters, and Council and a company of ladies along the Strand, through Ludgate to the Guildhall, “addressing the people as she went with wonderful good nature and uncommon courtesy.”19 There, beneath the cloth of estate and with scepter in hand, she gave a stirring speech to rally London to her cause, her voice, as one ambassador later described, “rough and loud almost like a man’s so that when she speaks she is always heard a long way off.”20
I am come in mine own person to tell you what you already see and know, I mean the traitorous and seditious assembling of the Kentish rebels against us and you. Their pretence (as they say) is to resist a marriage between us and the prince of Spain … by their answers, the marriage is found to be the least of their quarrel; for, swerving from their former demands, they now arrogantly require the governance of our person, the keeping of our town, and the placing of our councillors. What I am loving subjects, ye know your Queen, to whom, at my coronation, ye promised allegiance and obedience, I was then wedded to the realm, and to the laws of the same, the spousal ring whereof I wear here on my finger, and it never has and never shall be left off.
She was the rightful and true inheritor of the English Crown, she said. She was her father’s daughter and the kingdom’s wife. She told them:
I cannot tell how naturally a mother loveth her children, for I never had any, but if the subjects may be loved as a mother doth her child, then assure yourselves that I, your sovereign lady and your Queen, do earnestly love and favour you. I cannot but think you love me in return; and thus, bound in concord, we shall be able, I doubt not, to give these rebels a speedy overthrow.
She now addressed the subject of her marriage:
I am neither so desirous of wedding, nor so precisely wedded to my will, that I needs must have a husband. Hitherto I have lived a virgin, and I doubt not, with God’s grace, to live still. But if, as my ancestors have done, it might please God that I should leave you a successor to be your governor, I trust you would rejoice thereat; also, I know it would be to your comfort. Yet, if I thought this marriage would endanger any of you, my loving subjects, or the royal estate of this English realm, I would never consent thereto, nor marry while I lived. On the word of a Queen I assure you, that if the marriage appear not before the court of Parliament, nobility and commons, for the singular benefit of the whole realm, then I will abstain—not only from this, but from any other.
She finished:
Good and faithful subjects, pluck up your hearts, and like true men stand fast with your lawful prince against these rebels both our enemies and yours, and fear them not, for I assure you that I fear them nothing at all.21
She was loudly cheered. Londoners rallied to her defense, throwing their caps into the air. So eloquent was her speech that people cried out that they would live and die in her service and that Wyatt was a traitor.22 It was inspired rhetoric. Her queenship, which had lacked precedent, was defined in these moments with clarity, conviction, and originality. She had pledged herself to her country in entirely feminine terms but with an invocation of motherhood that was strong and resolute. It was an extraordinary moment. Hearts and minds were won over. “God save Queen Mary and the prince of Spain!” cried the crowd.
William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, was appointed as chief captain and general against Wyatt, and preparations were made for the defense of the capital. The following day, Candlemas, the inhabitants of London were “in harness.”23 Five hundred peasants were said to have deserted Wyatt on the night of the queen’s speech alone.
ON SATURDAY, February 3, Wyatt reached Southwark and set up two cannon against London Bridge. Finding the bridge’s drawbridge up and defended strongly against him, he laid siege for three days, waiting in vain for the bridge to be opened. There were a number of anxious days as the loyalty of the queen’s subjects hung in the balance. When Wyatt heard that the lord warden, Thomas Cheney, was pursuing him and that George Neville, Lord Abergavenny, along with Pembroke and Edward, Lord Clinton, intended to cut off his retreat and attack him from three sides, he broke camp. On Tuesday the sixth, he headed for Kingston, where he crossed the river during the night.
The climax came the following day, Ash Wednesday, as Londoners received news that Wyatt was upon them. By the early hours of the morning volunteers had been armed and called to rendezvous at Charing Cross. The musters were summoned immediately. “Much noise and tumult was everywhere; so terrible and fearful at the first was Wyatt and his armies coming to the most part of the citizens, who were seldom or never wont before to have or hear any such invasions to their city.”24 But the queen would not let the guns of the Tower be turned against the rebels, lest innocent citizens in Southwark be caught in the fire.
Earlier that morning Mary’s councillors had awakened her and urged her to flee by boat. She immediately requested Renard. He advised her to stay, arguing that if she fled she risked losing her kingdom. If London rose, the Tower would be lost, the heretics would throw religious affairs into confusion and kill the priests; Elizabeth would be proclaimed queen, and irremediable harm would result. The Council was divided; some pleaded with her to depart, others to stay. But Mary ignored their words of despair. She remained at Whitehall Palace in Westminster, praying, as some of her ladies wailed, “Alack, alack! We shall all be destroyed this night.”
Troops were mustered, trenches dug, artillery was positioned, and three squadrons of cavalry and 1,000 infantry were drawn up.25 Mary ordered Pembroke to lead out his infantry at first light and Lord Clinton, commander of the cavalry, to send a detachment of horse against Wyatt’s troops while they were disorganized and fatigued by their march. The queen’s main forces waited at Charing Cross. It was known that the rebels planned to pass through the area in the hope of gathering more sympathizers or splitting the queen’s forces before attacking Whitehall.
By nine in the morning, Wyatt was mustering his forces in Hyde Park, within six miles of Westminster and St. James’s. Again Mary was urged to flee, but again she refused and sent word that “she would tarry there [Westminster] to see the uttermost.” So great was her determination that “many thought she would have been in the field in person.”26
At around midday, Wyatt led his forces down St. James’s, past Temple Bar, and along Fleet Street, passing citizens armed at their doors. The mayor and aldermen stood paralyzed “as men half out of their lives.”27 Wyatt found Ludgate barred against him with cannon. He retreated toward Charing Cross and was attacked by the queen’s soldiers at Temple Bar. By five in the afternoon, Wyatt was captured and taken by boat to the Tower. Altogether, forty people were killed in the fighting in London, only two of them the queen’s men.
Celebrations were held across the capital
for the good victory that the Queen’s grace had against Wyatt and the rebellious of Kent, the which were overcome, thanks be unto God, with little bloodshed, and the residue taken and had to prison, and after where divers of them put to death in divers places in London and Kent, and procession everywhere that day for joy.28
As in July 1553, the citizens of London had shown that they were not prepared to support a usurper against their rightful queen. Mary had triumphed over the rebels. A fortnight of fear, panic, and danger had passed.
Though Mary had displayed clemency with the Northumberland conspirators on her accession, this time she could show no mercy. Stephen Gardiner used his Lenten sermon at court on February 11 to petition Mary to exact extreme justice. In the past she had “extended her mercy, particularly and privately,” but “familiarity had bred contempt” and rebellion had resulted; “through her leniency and gentleness much conspiracy and open rebellion was grown.” It was now necessary for the mercy of the commonwealth that the “rotten and hurtful members” be “cut off and consumed.” His meaning was clear. As the chronicler noted, “All the audience did gather there should shortly follow sharp and cruel execution.”29