Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [139]
LED BY SIR HENRY DUDLEY, a cousin of the late duke of Northumberland, and with the complicity of the French ambassador, Antoine de Noailles, the conspiracy sought to break the Spanish alliance and replace Mary with Elizabeth.13 After setting fire to several areas of the city to disguise their purpose, the plotters—among whom were Sir Anthony Kingston, released from the Tower after two weeks’ imprisonment, and Christopher Ashton, Dudley’s father-in-law—planned to rob the Exchequer of £50,000 in silver bullion and flee to the Isle of Wight in two of the queen’s ships, already commandeered. There they would raise forces and effect a national rebellion while Dudley sailed from France with a number of other exiles. But before the plan could be executed, Thomas White, an Exchequer official, leaked the plot to Cardinal Pole.14 At first the Council waited, giving the conspirators time to begin executing the plot, while secretly moving bullion out of the Exchequer. Finally, on March 18, the government acted. The chief conspirators were arrested and sent to the Tower.15 The Venetian ambassador reported on the twenty-fourth:
The suspicion about the conspirators who purposed setting fire to several quarters of the city for the sake of plunder, had a different root and origin to what was reported, a plot having been lately discovered of such a nature that, had it been carried into effect as arranged, it would doubtless … considering the ill-will of the majority of the population here on account of the religion … have placed the Queen and the whole kingdom in great trouble, as it was of greater circuit and extent than had been at first supposed.16
Lengthy inquiries followed throughout March and April as the web of conspiracy became ever wider, revealing links to Exchequer officials, fugitives in France, and gentry and officials across the country, including Sir Anthony Kingston, Sir William Courtenay, Sir John Pollard, and Richard Uvedale, captain of the Isle of Wight. On April 4, Dudley and most of his fellow conspirators were declared traitors, although by remaining in France Dudley escaped arrest. Two weeks later, the rebel John Throgmorton and Uvedale were hanged and quartered at Tyburn. Kingston died on his way to London. Eventually ten men were executed.
The plot had thrown the popular discontent and the willingness of France to intervene against Mary into sharp relief. All the plotters were heretics; many of them were associates of Sir Thomas Wyatt, who had been released from the Tower six months before. Their common cause, as with Wyatt’s rebellion two years before, was the unpopularity of the Spanish marriage, added to which was the new fear that Philip might be crowned king of England.
The conspiracy left Mary in a state of profound distress. The queen “rages against her subjects,” wrote Noailles. “She is utterly confounded by the faithlessness of those whom she most trusted, seeing that the greater part of these miserable creatures [Dudley’s conspirators] are kith and kin or favoured servants of the greatest men in the kingdom, even Lords of the Council.”17 Such was Mary’s fright that she would not allow Cardinal Pole to leave her for the ceremony of his consecration to the archbishopric of Canterbury, due to take place in his cathedral on March 25. He was instead consecrated in the Friars’ Church at Greenwich.18 By the summer there was reported to be something of a “siege mentality” at court. Mary no longer appeared in public, living instead in a state of seclusion, the palace full of armed men and the queen so afraid that she dared not sleep more than three hours a night.19