Thoroughly alarmed, and fully expecting to suffer the same fate as her unfortunate mother, Elizabeth denied with oaths and curses that she had ever had any letter from Wyatt, that she had ever written to the French King, or consented to anything that might endanger the Queen’s life. Haughtily she begged those who brought her the news to remember who she was. An hour later, the Earl of Sussex and two other members of the Council dismissed her suite, leaving her only one gentleman, three ladies and two servants. Guards were placed in her antechamber, and in the garden under her windows. The next morning, Saturday, 17th March, the Earl of Sussex and the Marquis of Winchester announced that her barge was in attendance to convey her to the Tower. Her scornful mood having changed to one of deep depression, she entreated to be allowed to wait for the next tide. Lord Winchester answered her tritely, that time and tide waited for no man, whereupon she begged that they would at least permit her to write a few lines to the Queen. Winchester again refused, but the Earl of Sussex, more friendly, gave her leave, and swore that he himself would deliver her letter, and bring her back the answer. She was so long in writing it, that the tide no longer served, and Elizabeth scored her usual point of delay. She obtained, indeed, twenty-four hours respite, for her guards would not risk the midnight tide, for fear of a rescue under cover of the darkness. Mary, extremely displeased, exclaimed with some bitterness that in her father’s time they would not have dared to take upon themselves such disobedience, and vouchsafed no answer to Elizabeth’s letter. The next day being Palm Sunday, at nine o’clock the warrant was executed, and the Princess conducted through the guards to her barge, which was moored at the water entrance to the palace. Foxe says,[431] “Being come forth into the garden, she did cast her eyes towards the window, thinking to have seen the Queen, which she could not: whereat she said, she marvelled much what the nobility of the realm meant, which in that sort would suffer her to be led into captivity, the Lord knew whither, for she did not,” a remark which, perhaps, savoured of treason more than anything else she allowed to escape her. According to the chronicler already often quoted:—