Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [86]
Wherefore, good people, as ye mindeth the surety of her said person, the honour and surety of your country, being good Englishmen, prepare yourselves in all haste with all power to repair unto her said armies yet being in Suffolk, making your prayers to God for her success … upon the said causes she utterly defyeth the said duke for her most errant traitor to God and to the realm.5
Within days an unskilled and disorganized mob had been turned into a disciplined army, obedient to order and eager to meet the enemy. On the twentieth, Mary rode down from the castle to review her troops. Standards were unfurled and her forces drawn up in battle order; helmets were thrown high in the air as shouts of “Long live our good Queen Mary!” and “Death to the traitors!” rang out across the Suffolk countryside. Mary dismounted and for the next three hours inspected her troops on foot.
SINCE NORTHUMBERLAND’S departure from London, the privy councillors had begun to waver in their support for Jane as queen, “being deeply rooted in their minds, in spite of these seditions, a kind of remorse, knowing her [Mary] to be, after all the daughter of their King Henry VIII.”6 By the eighteenth, their resolve had crumbled. Ships’ crews off Yarmouth had deserted, and rumors had spread that Sir Edmund Peckham, treasurer of the Mint and keeper of the king’s privy purse, had fled with the monies to Framlingham. Now a proclamation was drawn up offering a reward for the arrest of Northumberland: £1,000 in land to any noble, £500 to any knight, and £100 to any yeoman bold enough to lay his hand on the duke’s shoulder and demand his surrender.7
The following day, a dozen or so privy councillors, including the earls of Bedford, Pembroke, Arundel, Shrewsbury, and Worcester, and Lords Paget, Darcy, and Cobham, broke out of the Tower, which had been locked, and rendezvoused at Pembroke’s house, Baynard’s Castle. There they took the final step. In a speech before the Council, Arundel declared:
This Crown belongs rightfully, by direct succession, to My Lady Mary lawful and natural daughter of our King Henry VIII. Therefore why should you let yourselves be corrupted and tolerate that anybody might unjustly possess what does not belong to him? … 8
If by chance you should feel somehow guilty proclaiming now our Queen My Lady Mary, having acclaimed Jane only a few days ago, showing such quick change of mind, I tell you this is no reason to hesitate, because having sinned it befits always to amend, especially when, as in the present circumstances, it means honour for your goodselves, welfare and freedom for our country, love and loyalty to his King, peace and contentment for all people.9
At five or six in the evening of the twentieth, as Arundel and Paget set out to pledge their fidelity to Mary at Framlingham and petition for pardon on behalf of the whole Council, two heralds and three trumpeters rode from Baynard’s Castle to the Cross at Cheapside. With the streets full of Londoners, the heralds announced that Mary was queen.10 “There was such shout of the people with casting up of caps and crying, ‘God save Queen Mary,’ that the style of the proclamation could not be heard, the people were so joyful, both man, woman and child.”11 For two days all the bells in London, “which it had been decided to convert into artillery,” rang; money was “cast a-way,” and there were banquets and bonfires in the streets.12 “It would be impossible to imagine greater rejoicing than this,” the imperial ambassadors reported.13
From a distance the earth must have looked like Mount Etna. The people are mad with joy, feasting and singing, and the streets crowded all night long. I am unable to describe to you, nor would you believe, the exultation of all men. I will only tell you that not a soul imagined the possibility of such a