Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [107]
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,