[Footnote 295: Il me repliqua que vivant Elizabeth il n'a espoir a la tranquillite du Royaulme, que quant a luy si chascun alloit si rondement en besoyn comme il fait, les choses se porteroient mieux.--Renard to the Emperor, April 3: _Rolls House MSS._ From these dark plotters, what might not be feared? Holinshed says that while Elizabeth was in the Tower, a writ was sent down for her execution devised, as was believed, by Gardiner; and that Lord Chandos (Sir John Brydges, the Lieutenant of the Tower) refused to put it in force. The story has been treated as a fable, and in the form in which it is told by Holinshed, it was very likely untrue: yet in the presence of these infernal conversations, I think it highly probable that, as the hope of a judicial conviction grew fainter, schemes were talked of, and were perhaps tried, for cutting the knot in a decisive manner. In revolutionary times men feel that if to-day is theirs, to-morrow may be their enemies'; and they are not particularly scrupulous. The anxious words of Sussex did not refer to the merely barring a prisoner's door.] In this condition of the political atmosphere parliament assembled on the 2nd of April. The Oxford scheme had been relinquished as impracticable. The Lord Mayor informed the queen that he would not answer for the peace of the city in the absence of the court; the Tower might be surprised and the prisoners released; and to lose the Tower would be to lose the crown. The queen said that she would not leave London while her sister's fate was undetermined.[296] The Houses met, therefore, as usual, as Westminster, and the speech from the throne was read in Mary's presence by the chancellor. [Footnote 296: Renard.] Since the last parliament, Gardiner said, the people of England had given proofs of unruly humour. The queen was their undoubted sovereign, and a measure would be submitted to the Lords and Commons to declare, in some emphatic manner, her claim to her subjects' obedience. Her majesty desiring, further, in compliance with her subjects' wishes, to take a husband, she had fixed her choice on the Prince of Spain, as a person agreeable to herself and likely to be a valuable friend to the realm: the people, however, had insolently and ignorantly presumed to mutiny against her intentions, and, in her affection for the commonwealth, her majesty had consented to submit the articles of the marriage to the approval of parliament.