Page:VCH Surrey 1.djvu/444

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A HISTORY OF SURREY addressed to the Marquis of Northampton, lieutenant of Surrey, the deputy lieutenants and magistrates, announcing her entry as queen into her Tower of London, and expressing confidence that the marquis will do all in his power to maintain her right against the claim of the ' Lady Mary, bastard daughter to our grete uncle Henry the eight.' The commission of lieutenancy to the marquis granted by King Edward is confirmed and the queen promises to renew the same. 1 On July 1 6 Jane the queen wrote to admonish the gentry of Surrey to stand fast in their allegiance, and on the same date the lords of the Council who yet remained in London wrote with ill-disguised alarm to the sheriff and justices that reports were daily spread against the queen, and ' falsely also of some of us of her Majesties Privey Counsell.' Wherefore they thought fit to declare the great dangers to the realm and to the ' true preaching of Goddes worde ' if the bastard daughter of the late King Henry were to be allowed to succeed. They significantly ordered the application of the ' punishment of the laws ordeyned for suche as shall attempt anything against their Sovereign lord or lady being in possession of the Imperiall crowne.' The Lady Jane was, they wished to suggest, at all events queen de facto and it was not treason to support her. 8 The lieutenant of Surrey was not among those who wrote this from the Tower. He was in the field against Mary, but already meditating the change of sides, which he always executed in time to save his head though not on this occasion in time to escape revisiting the Tower. 3 Three days later the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke and others who had signed the letter proclaimed Queen Mary. On that day, July 1 9, Queen Jane sent her last warrant perhaps to Sir Thomas Cawarden to provide tents for the troops who had already forsaken her. 4 On July 2 1 Arundel ordered Sir Thomas, as keeper of Nonsuch Park, to provide two bucks for the royal household of queen Mary. 6 Cawarden would probably have gladly supported Queen Jane if she had had a chance of success. Sir Thomas Saunders, the sheriff, was of the family to which Nicholas Saunders or Saunder, the well-known Romanist and controversialist, belonged, and more likely inclined throughout to the other side. On July 1 9, the day on which the Council in London proclaimed Mary, a letter was written from the Lord Abergavenny and other Kentish gentlemen to Sir Thomas Cawarden announcing their proclama- tion of Mary. 8 T. Wyatt is among the signers. This is pretty certainly Sir Thomas Wyatt. The nation was unmistakably for Queen Mary. The steps towards reconciliation with Rome agitated a comparatively small body of genuine reformers and some of the holders of abbey lands. The scheme for a Spanish marriage alarmed many, especially in the south-east, who knew what Spanish rule meant in the Netherlands. On January 26, 1554, Wyatt was in arms in Kent against Queen Mary's 1 Loseley MSS. July n, 1553, i. 3.

  • Ibid. July 1 6, 1553. This and other documents at Loseley are among the Cawarden papers not

in the volumes of collected letters. 3 He was attainted but pardoned, and was shortly released from the Tower. 4 Loseley MSS. July 19, 1553. B Ibid. July 21, 1553. 6 Ibid. July 19, 1553. 374