Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/205

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1553.]
QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.
185

the accession of Queen Jane, and the troops were sworn man by man to the new sovereign. Sir William Petre and Sir John Cheke waited on the Emperor's ambassador to express a hope that the alteration in the succession would not affect the good understanding between the Courts of England and Flanders. The preachers were set to work to pacify the citizens; and, if Scheyfne is to be believed, a blood cement was designed to strengthen the new throne; and Gardiner, the Duke of Norfolk, and Lord Courtenay,[1] were directed to prepare for death in three days.[2] But Northumberland would scarcely have risked an act of gratuitous tyranny. Norfolk, being under attainder, might have been put to death without violation of the forms of law, by warrant from the Crown; but Gardiner was uncondemned, and Courtenay had never been accused of crime.

July 10.The next day, Monday, the 10th of July, the royal barges came down the Thames from Richmond; and at three o'clock in the afternoon Lady Jane landed at the broad staircase at the Tower, as Queen, in undesired splendour. A few scattered groups of spectators stood to watch the arrival; but it appeared, from their silence, that they had been brought together chiefly by curiosity. As the gates closed, the heralds-at-arms, with a company of the archers of the
  1. Edward Lord Courtenay was son of the executed Marquis of Exeter and great-grandson of Edward IV. He was thrown into the Tower with his father when a little boy, and in that confinement, in fifteen years, he had grown to manhood. Of him and his fortunes all that need be said will unfold itself.
  2. Scheyfne to Charles V., July 10: MS. Rolls House.