History of the English People, Volume IVGreen, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume IV
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
The deed was hardly done when on the sixth of July the young king passed
away. Northumberland felt little anxiety about the success of his
design. He had won over Lord Hastings to his support by giving him his
daughter in marriage, and had secured the help of Lord Pembroke by
wedding Jane's sister, Catharine, to his son. The army, the fortresses,
the foreign soldiers, were at his command; the hotter Protestants were
with him; France, in dread of Mary's kinship with the Emperor, offered
support to his plans. Jane therefore was at once proclaimed Queen on
Edward's death, and accepted as their sovereign by the Lords of the
Council. But the temper of the whole people rebelled against so lawless
a usurpation. The eastern counties rose as one man to support Mary; and
when Northumberland marched from London with ten thousand at his back
to crush the rising, the Londoners, Protestant as they were, showed
their ill-will by a stubborn silence. "The people crowd to look upon
us," the Duke noted gloomily, "but not one calls 'God speed ye.'" While
he halted for reinforcements his own colleagues struck him down. Eager
to throw from their necks the yoke of a rival who had made himself a
master, the Council no sooner saw the popular reaction than they
proclaimed Mary Queen; and this step was at once followed by a
declaration of the fleet in her favour, and by the announcement of the
levies in every shire that they would only fight in her cause. As the
tidings reached him the Duke's courage suddenly gave way. His retreat to
Cambridge was the signal for a general defection. Northumberland himself
threw his cap into the air and shouted with his men for Queen Mary. But
his submission failed to avert his doom; and the death of the Duke drew
with it the imprisonment in the Tower of the hapless girl whom he had
made the tool of his ambition.
CHAPTER II
THE CATHOLIC REACTION
1553-1558
[Sidenote: Mary and the Monarchy.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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