Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [109]
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
CHAPTER 46
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
—RENARD TO PHILIP, FEBRUARY 19, 1554
IN 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.2 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.3
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.”4 Mary’s victory was secure, the defeat and humiliation of the rebels total. The public spectacle of reconciliation underscored the scale of her triumph.
FIVE DAYS AFTER Wyatt’s surrender, Lady Jane Grey and her husband were put to death. Although neither Jane nor Guildford Dudley had taken part in Wyatt’s rebellion, they were now too great a threat to live. Both had been found guilty of high treason and