“On Saturday in the morning, being the 3rd of February, there came forth a proclamation, set forth by the Queen’s Council, wherein was declared that that traitor Wyatt educed simple people against the Queen. Wherefore, she willed all her loving subjects to endeavour themselves to withstand him; and that the Duke of Suffolk with his two brethren were discomfited by the Earl of Huntingdon, and certain of his horsemen taken, and the Duke and his two brethren fled in servingman’s coats; and that Sir Peter Carew was fled into France; and that Sir Gawen Carew, Gibbs and others were taken and remain in Exeter; and that the whole city of Exeter and commons thereabout, were at the Queen’s commandment, with their power to the death. And that she did pardon the whole camp except Wyatt, Harper, Rudston and Iseley; and that whoever could take Wyat, except the said four persons, should have an hundred pounds a year, to them and to their heirs for ever.”[404] Nevertheless Wyatt pushed on boldly, in spite of his daily decreasing numbers, and the disorganised state of his band, weary with trudging day after day along the miry high-roads, exposed to the inclemency of the prolonged winter. He reached Southwark, which he ravaged during four terrible days, seeking how he might cross the river and capture London. But the bridge had been hewn down, and he was obliged, after his men had pillaged Gardiner’s house, and destroyed his library, “so that a man might have gone up to the knees in the leaves of books cut out and thrown under feet,”[405] to move out of the reach of the batteries placed on the Tower walls. He marched up to Kingston, where he effected a crossing. Here also the bridge had been partially destroyed, but he swam over the Thames, and procured a boat, in which he, with a few others, worked so successfully at its restoration that by eleven o’clock at night his 7,000 men were able to pass over it. The audacity of the feat filled London once more with consternation. Gardiner threw himself on his knees, and entreated Mary to retire into the Tower for safety. She replied, that if the Earl of Pembroke and Lord Clinton, who had charge of the defence, would do their duty, she would assuredly remain at her post. But she was the only calm person in the whole panic-stricken palace. “The Queen’s ladies,” said Underhill,[406] “made the greatest lamentations that night; they wept and wrung their hands, and from their exclamations may be judged the state of the interior of Whitehall. Alack! alack! they said, some great mischief is toward. We shall all be destroyed this night. What a sight is this, to see the queen’s bedchamber full of armed men! The like was never seen or heard before!”