one of the royal chaplains who attacked the Reformed religion in a
public sermon. But the Queen and her priests went steadily on.
Ridley, the powerful bishop of the last reign, was seized and sent
to the Tower. LATIMER, also celebrated among the Clergy of the
last reign, was likewise sent to the Tower, and Cranmer speedily
followed. Latimer was an aged man; and, as his guards took him
through Smithfield, he looked round it, and said, ‘This is a place
that hath long groaned for me.’ For he knew well, what kind of
bonfires would soon be burning. Nor was the knowledge confined to
Page 169
Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
him. The prisons were fast filled with the chief Protestants, who
were there left rotting in darkness, hunger, dirt, and separation
from their friends; many, who had time left them for escape, fled
from the kingdom; and the dullest of the people began, now, to see
what was coming.
It came on fast. A Parliament was got together; not without strong
suspicion of unfairness; and they annulled the divorce, formerly
pronounced by Cranmer between the Queen’s mother and King Henry the
Eighth, and unmade all the laws on the subject of religion that had
been made in the last King Edward’s reign. They began their
proceedings, in violation of the law, by having the old mass said
before them in Latin, and by turning out a bishop who would not
kneel down. They also declared guilty of treason, Lady Jane Grey
for aspiring to the Crown; her husband, for being her husband; and
Cranmer, for not believing in the mass aforesaid. They then prayed
the Queen graciously to choose a husband for herself, as soon as
might be.
Now, the question who should be the Queen’s husband had given rise
to a great deal of discussion, and to several contending parties.
Some said Cardinal Pole was the man – but the Queen was of opinion
that he was NOT the man, he being too old and too much of a
student. Others said that the gallant young COURTENAY, whom the
Queen had made Earl of Devonshire, was the man – and the Queen
thought so too, for a while; but she changed her mind. At last it
appeared that PHILIP, PRINCE OF SPAIN, was certainly the man –
though certainly not the people’s man; for they detested the idea
of such a marriage from the beginning to the end, and murmured that
the Spaniard would establish in England, by the aid of foreign
soldiers, the worst abuses of the Popish religion, and even the
terrible Inquisition itself.
These discontents gave rise to a conspiracy for marrying young
Courtenay to the Princess Elizabeth, and setting them up, with
popular tumults all over the kingdom, against the Queen. This was
discovered in time by Gardiner; but in Kent, the old bold county,
the people rose in their old bold way. SIR THOMAS WYAT, a man of
great daring, was their leader. He raised his standard at
Maidstone, marched on to Rochester, established himself in the old
castle there, and prepared to hold out against the Duke of Norfolk,
who came against him with a party of the Queen’s guards, and a body
of five hundred London men. The London men, however, were all for
Elizabeth, and not at all for Mary. They declared, under the
castle walls, for Wyat; the Duke retreated; and Wyat came on to
Deptford, at the head of fifteen thousand men.
But these, in their turn, fell away. When he came to Southwark,
there were only two thousand left. Not dismayed by finding the
London citizens in arms, and the guns at the Tower ready to oppose
his crossing the river there, Wyat led them off to Kingston-upon-
Thames, intending to cross the bridge that he knew to be in that
place, and so to work his way round to Ludgate, one of the old
gates of the City. He found the bridge broken down, but mended it,
came across, and bravely fought his way up Fleet Street to Ludgate
Hill. Finding the gate closed against him, he fought his way back
again, sword in hand, to Temple Bar. Here, being overpowered, he
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236