Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [110]
At ten o’clock on Monday, February 12, Guildford Dudley was beheaded on Tower Hill. The seventeen-year-old Lady Jane watched as her husband departed from his prison in the Beauchamp Tower for the scaffold and then afterward as “his carcass, thrown into a cart and his head in a cloth,” was brought back for burial in the chapel in the Tower precinct. It was, as the London chronicler described, “a sight to her no less than death.”6 An hour later, Jane was collected by Sir John Brydges, lieutenant of the Tower, and, dressed in black, led out to the scaffold on Tower Green. She prayed as she went. Two gentlewomen accompanied her, both weeping as they approached the gallows.
At the block Jane addressed the crowd before her: “Good people, I am hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same.” She confessed her guilt for her part in Northumberland’s attempted coup but denied her involvement in Wyatt’s rebellion, claiming to be “innocent before God, and the face of you, good Christian people, this day.” After removing her headdress, gloves, and gown, she bent down, begging the executioner to “despatch me quickly,” and asking him “Will you take [my head] before I lay me down?” The hangman answered, “No, madame.” After tying a handkerchief around her eyes, she groped for the block. Panicking, she called out, “What shall I do? Where is it?” Taking pity on the young woman, one of the bystanders led her to it. She laid her head on the block and said, “Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” The ax fell; with one sweep her head was removed.7
AS THE EXECUTIONS continued, attention turned to Elizabeth, in whose name the rebels had acted. On January 26, the day after Wyatt had raised his standard at Rochester, Mary had written to her sister, requesting that she come to court:
Right dear and entirely beloved sister,
We greet you well. And where certain evil-disposed persons, minding more the satisfaction of their own malicious and seditious minds, than their duty of allegiance towards us, have of late foully spread divers lewd and untrue rumours … do travail to induce our good and loving subjects to an unnatural rebellion against God, Us and the Tranquillity of the realm, we, tending the surety of your person, which might chance to be in some peril, if any sudden tumult should arise where you now be, or about Donnington, whither as we understand, you are minded shortly to remove, do therefore think expedient you should put yourself in good readiness, with all convenient speed, to make your repair hither to us …
Your loving sister, Mary the Queen.8
Elizabeth had excused herself from the queen’s summons, citing ill health. Now, with the rebellion quashed, the government acted. On February 9, three councillors were sent to Elizabeth’s residence at Ashridge in Hertfordshire, charged with bringing her to court. The two royal doctors who had been sent ahead to report on her condition concluded that she was fit to be moved, despite her protestations. Three days later she left Ashridge, bound for London.9 On the same day, February 12, Edward Courtenay, the man the rebels had hoped to place on the throne with Elizabeth, was taken to the Tower as a prisoner.
After a slow journey to London, which took eleven rather than the five days planned due to Elizabeth’s apparent illness, she arrived in the city in an open litter, dressed in white to proclaim her innocence. From Smithfield and Fleet Street she proceeded to Whitehall, passing the gallows and city gates decorated with severed heads and dismembered corpses, and followed by great crowds of people. A hundred horsemen in velvet coats rode in front of her; another hundred behind in scarlet cloth trimmed with velvet.10 Renard wrote, “She had her litter opened to show herself to the people, and her