Finding that his appeal had done him no service, Northumberland and his fellow prisoners pleaded guilty. The duke prayed that his sentence might be commuted into decapitation, as became a peer of the realm, and he prayed the queen that she would be merciful to his children on account of their youth. He desired also that an able divine might be sent to him for the settling of his conscience, thereby intimating that he was at heart a Romanist, in hopes, no doubt, of winning upon the mind of the queen, for he was very anxious to save his life. He professed, too, that he was in possession of certain State secrets of vital importance to Her Majesty, and entreated that two members of the Council might be sent to him to receive these matters from him. What his object was became manifest from the result, for Gardiner and another member of the Council being sent to him in consequence, he implored Gardiner passionately to intercede for his life. Gardiner gave him little hope, but promised to do what he could, and on returning to the queen so much moved her, that she was inclined to grant the request; but others of the Council wrote through Renard to the emperor, who strenuously warned her, if she valued her safety, or the peace of her reign, not to listen to such an arch traitor. Yet a letter of Northumberland's to Lord Arundel, the night before his execution, preserved in Tierney's "History of the Castle and Town of Arundel," shows that to the last he clung convulsively to the hope of life. He there asks for life, "yea, the life of a dogge, that he may but lyve and kiss the queen's feet."
We shall see that this weak, bad man actually did profess himself a Romanist on the scaffold. The fact was that his only religion was his ambition, and this was pretty well known during Edward's life; for on one occasion, according to Strype, he spoke so contemptuously of the new religion, that Cranmer, in a moment of excitement, actually challenged him to fight a duel. Northumberland's eldest son, the Earl of Warwick, who was tried with him, behaved with much more dignity. He wasted no endeavours on vain and transparent excuses, he craved no forgiveness, but merely begged that his debts might be discharged out of his confiscated property. The Marquis of Northampton pleaded that he was not in office during this conspiracy, and had had no concern in it, being engaged in hunting and other field sports; whereas it was notorious that he was mixed up with the whole of it, and had been one of the noblemen who went to present the crown to Lady Jane at Sion House. His plea did not prevent his receiving sentence. The commoners were tried the next day in the same court, and were also sentenced as traitors. The next day being Sunday, another priest was ordered to preach at St. Paul's Cross, and in order to protect him, several lords of the Council, as the Lord Privy Seal, the Earl of Bedford, the Earl of Pembroke, the Lords Rich and Wentworth, accompanied by 200 of the guard, with their captain, Sir Henry Jerningham, went thither, and the preacher was surrounded by halberdiers. The mayor and aldermen in their liveries also attended. This was an indication of what was coming, and in accordance with a past proclamation of the queen, in which she had declared that she did not mean to compel and constrain other men's consciences, but that the lord mayor must not suffer the reading of the Scriptures in the churches of the city, or the preaching of curates who were not licensed by her. The Sunday on which the riot took place at the Cross was, therefore, the last in which the form of religion established by Edward VI. was tolerated.
On Tuesday, the 22nd of August, Northumberland, Gates, and Palmer were brought from the Tower to execution on Tower Hill. Of the eleven condemned, only these three were executed—an instance of clemency, in so gross a conspiracy to deprive a sovereign of a throne, which is without parallel. When the Duke of Northumberland and Gates met on the scaffold, they each accused the other of being the author of the treason. Northumberland charged the whole design on Gates and the Council; Gates charged it more truly on Northumberland and his high authority. They protested, however, that they entirely forgave each other, and Northumberland, stepping to the rail, made a long speech, praying for a long and happy reign to the queen; calling on the people to bear witness that he died in the true Catholic faith. Ambition, he said, had led him to conform to the new faith, though he condemned it in his heart, and the adoption of which had filled both England and Germany with constant dissensions, troubles, and civil wars. After repeating the "Miserere," "De Profundis," and the "Paternoster," with some portion of another psalm, concluding with the words, "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit," he laid his head on the block, saying that he deserved a thousand deaths, and it was severed at a stroke. Gates and Palmer died professing great penitence.
The Lancaster herald, an old servant of the duke's, obtained an audience of the queen after the execution, and, no doubt, impressed with the idea that the head of Northumberland would be impaled in some public spot as that of a traitor, prayed that it might be given to him for burial. Mary bade him, in God's name, see that both head and body received proper interment; and, accordingly, the gory remains of the duke were deposited in the chapel of St. Peter, in the Tower, by the side of his victim, Somerset, so that, says Stowe, there now lay before the high altar two headless dukes betwixt two headless queens—the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland betwixt Queen Anne Boleyn and Queen Catherine Howard.
During these transactions Mary was residing at Richmond Palace, having quitted the Tower on the 12th of the month. It would soon be necessary to return thither, preparatory to her coronation but there was one person whom she sent thither as a prisoner previous to her revisiting the awful old fortress herself, and that was Cranmer. With all Mary's natural goodness and kindness of heart, with all the proofs which she had lately given of her forgiveness of her enemies, there was one subject which, above all others, she deemed lay as a sacred duty upon her, and from which neither her own life nor that of others would turn her aside. Though she had pledged herself not to alter the form of religion which had been established by her late brother, there is no doubt that she had vowed in her own innermost heart to remove it, notwithstanding, and to restore that only worship which she believed to be the true one. From her earliest years the fate of her mother and of her religion
