Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [111]
Upon her arrival at Whitehall, Mary refused to see her. She was lodged in a remote and secure part of the palace, adjacent to the Privy Gardens, from which neither she nor her servants could go out without passing through the Guard. Renard made clear what he thought should happen to Elizabeth: “The Queen is advised to send her to the Tower, since she is accused by Wyatt, named in the letters of the French ambassador, suspected by her own councillors, and it is certain that the enterprise was undertaken in her favour … if now that the occasion offers, they do not punish her and Courtenay, the Queen will never be secure.”12
Meanwhile, as more leaders of the rebellion were arrested and questioned, the evidence against Elizabeth mounted. It emerged that Sir James Croft had stopped at Ashridge on his way to raise the Marches and that he and Wyatt had advised Elizabeth to move to Donnington, her castle two miles north of Newbury. Her servant Sir William St. Loe, who had been sent with a letter to Wyatt, was subsequently found with two of the rebel leaders at Tonbridge. Equally incriminating was the fact that a copy of Elizabeth’s letter excusing herself from the queen’s summons to court had been found in the seized dispatches of the French ambassador, Noailles. Elizabeth had, at the very least, been in contact with the conspirators, though as yet there was no evidence that she had approved of their designs or known of their plan. In the Tower, Gardiner pressed Wyatt to confess concerning Elizabeth, but the rebel leader would disclose nothing. At his trial, Wyatt admitted only that he had sent her a letter advising her to get as far away from London as she could, to which she had replied, though not in writing.
It was the flimsiest of evidence, but for the Council it was enough. On Friday, March 16, Elizabeth was formally charged with involvement in Wyatt and Carew’s conspiracies. The following day, she would be imprisoned as a suspected traitor.
WHEN THE MARQUESS of Winchester and the earl of Sussex arrived to take Elizabeth by barge to the Tower, she begged to be given more time and the opportunity to write to Mary, a request the commissioners granted.13 Addressed “To the Queen,” her letter sought to secure her freedom and save her life:
If any ever did try this old saying—that a King’s word was more than another man’s oath—I most humbly beseech your Majesty to verify it in me, and to remember your last promise and my last demand: that I be not condemned without answer and due proof: which it seems that now I am, for that without cause provided I am by your Council from you commanded to go unto the Tower; a place more wonted for a false traitor, than a true subject…. I never practiced, counselled or consented to any thing that might be prejudicial to your person any way, or dangerous to the state by any mean. And therefore I humbly beseech your Majesty to let me answer afore your self, and not suffer me to trust to your councillors …
Yet I pray God, as evil persuasion persuade not one sister against the other; and all for that have heard false report, and not hearken to the truth known. Therefore once again, with humbleness of my heart because I am not suffered to bow the knees of my body, I humbly crave to speak with your highness.
More than half of her second sheet of paper was left blank; she scored it with diagonal lines so that no words could be added and attributed to her, and then she added a final appeal:
I humbly crave but only one word of answer from yourself, Your Highness’s most faithful subject that hath been from the beginning and will be to my end, Elizabeth.14
By the time she had finished her plea, the tide had risen and it was too late to depart. Her imprisonment would have to wait for the following day. Mary raged at Sussex and Winchester for granting her permission to write: “They would never have dared to do such a thing in her father’s lifetime,” and she “only wished he might come to life again for a month.”15
At nine