Authors: Anna Whitelock
Mary Tudor (42 page)
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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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GIBBETS AND HANGED MEN
At present there is no other occupation than the cutting off of heads and inflicting exemplary punishment. Jane of Suffolk, who made herself Queen, and her husband have been executed; Courtenay is in the Tower; and this very day we expect the Lady Elizabeth to arrive here, who they say has lived loosely like her mother and is now with child. So when all these heads are off no one will be left in the realm able to resist the Queen.
1
—R
ENARD TO
P
HILIP
, F
EBRUARY
19, 1554
I
N THE DAYS AND WEEKS FOLLOWING THE DEFEAT OF THE REBELLION
a stream of rebels were arrested. Prisons overflowed and churches became jails as hundreds of suspected traitors were questioned and tried.
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Gallows were erected at each of the city gates and at principal landmarks in Cheapside, Fleet Street, and Smithfield, on London Bridge, and at Tower Hill. The whitecoats who had gone over to the rebels were hanged at the doors of their houses in the city. As the executions continued, the smell of rotting corpses polluted the air. Renard wrote that “one sees nothing but gibbets and hanged men”—a warning to citizens of the cost of rebellion.
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Yet in the midst of this wave of retribution there was clemency too. As the London diarist Henry Machyn recorded, some of “the Kent men went to the court with halters about their necks and bound with cords,” walking two by two through London to Westminster; the “poorer prisoners knelt down in the mire, and there the Queen’s grace
looked out over the gate and gave them all pardon and they cried out ‘God save Queen Mary!’ as they went.”
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Mary’s victory was secure, the defeat and humiliation of the rebels total. The public spectacle of reconciliation underscored the scale of her triumph.