This news had come to Mary before she left The Hague, and she knew that the day after her landing there would be a formal offering and acceptance of the crown of Great Britain. She beheld the prospect with extraordinary sensations as, passing Gravesend, and leaving her vessel and escort at Greenwich, she proceeded in a state barge to the more familiar reaches of the river, Rotherhithe, Wapping, and presently the Tower, rising golden grey in the chill spring sunshine, by the bridge with the deep crazy arches through which the water poured in dangerous rapids. Crowded with houses was this old bridge, and in the centre a little chapel with a bell, now ringing joyfully. Mary remembered it all—the long busy wharves, now taking holiday; the barges, boats, and compact shipping now hung with flags; Galley Key, where the slaves in chains unlade the oranges, silks, and spices from the East; the houses, on the side of Surrey, among which rose the spire of the great church at Southwark; the merchants’ houses built down to the water’s edge, with pleasant gardens filled with poplar trees and set with the figureheads of ships in which some adventurer had sailed his early travels long ago in the time of Elizabeth Tudor; and the distant prospect of the city itself shimmering now under an early haze of sunshine. All was utterly strange, yet nothing was altered; it looked the same as when, weeping to leave England, she had come down these waters in a barge with her silent husband, ten years ago, and waited at Gravesend for the wind. One difference attracted Mary’s eyes. Behind and beyond the Tower a mass of scaffolding rose that dominated the whole city, and through the crossed poles, boards, and ropes, she could discern the majestic outline of the dome of that vast church which had been slowly rising out of the ashes of the old St. Paul’s since she was a child. At the Tower Wharf she landed, laughing hysterically, and hardly knowing what she did. They gave her a royal salute of cannon, and she saw all the guards drawn up in squares, with their spears in the midst, and a red way of brocade carpet laid down for her, and a coach with white horses and running footmen, and beyond, a press of noblemen and officers, and the sheriffs and aldermen of the city with the Lord Mayor. She hesitated on the gangway, amidst her ladies, her spirit completely overwhelmed. She looked round desperately for some one to whom to say—"I cannot do it—I cannot put it through. I must die, but I cannot be Queen."