in court should pay £2,000 each as a fine, and the rest 1,000 marks each. They refused, and were recommitted to prison, whence they did not escape till they had been there altogether eight months, and paid five of them £220 a-piece, and the other three, who were much poorer men, £60 each.
Of the humbler victims, Brett, the captain of the train-bands, and about twenty of his common soldiers, who had gone over to Wyatt at Rochester Bridge, were sent down there and executed as traitors, and gibbeted. A proclamation was issued, forbidding any one on pain of death to harbour any of Wyatt's faction, and commanding all men to bring them forth and deliver them forthwith to the lord mayor and the queen's justices.
"By reason of this proclamation," says Holinshed, "a great number of these poor caitiffs were brought forth, being so many in number that all the prisons in number sufficed not to receive them; so that for lack of place they were fain to bestow them in divers churches of the said City. And shortly after there were set up in London, for a terror to the common sort—because the White-Coats (train-bands) being sent out of the City, as before ye have heard, revolted from the queen's part to the aid of Wyatt—twenty pair of gallows, on the which were hanged in several places to the number of fifty persons."
These gibbets and their revolting burdens were not removed till July, when Phillip was about to enter London. Four hundred other prisoners were conducted to the palace with halters about their necks, where the queen appeared at a balcony, pronounced their pardon, and dismissed them to their homes. Mary has been accused of great cruelty in the punishment of these insurgents, but her really cruel deeds had not commenced yet. To us there appears a wonderful clemency and moderation in her treatment of them. When we consider that this was a second attempt to dethrone her within six months, and remember the surprising vengeance which her father, and even her brother, took on like occasions, and still more the bloody recompence of rebellion in 1715 and 1745, we must pronounce the conduct of Mary mild in the extreme.
The Princess Elizabeth at Traitor's Gate. (See page 368.)
The execution which caused and still causes the deepest interest, and which always appears as a shadow on the character of Queen Mary, was that of her cousin Lady Jane Grey. Till this second unfortunate insurrection, Mary steadily refused to listen to any persuasions to shed the blood of Lady Jane. She had had her tried and condemned to death, but she still permitted her to live, gave her a considerable degree of liberty and unusual indulgences, and it was generally understood that she meant eventually to pardon her. The ambassadors of Charles V. had strenuously urged her to prevent future danger by executing her rival, but she had replied that she could not find in her conscience to put her unfortunate kinswoman to death, who had not been an accomplice of Northumberland, but merely an unresisting instrument in his hands; but now that the very mischief had taken place which the emperor and her own Council had prognosticated, she was importuned on all sides to take what they described as the only prudent course. Poynet, the Bishop of Winchester, says that those lords of the Council who had been the most instrumental at the death of Edward VI. in thrusting Royalty on Lady Jane—namely, Pembroke and Winchester—and who had been amongst the first to denounce Mary as illegitimate, were now the most remorseless advocates for Lady Jane's death.
Accordingly, the day after the fall of Wyatt Mary signed the warrant for the execution of "Guildford Dudley and his wife," to take place within three days. On the morning of the execution the queen sent Lady
