Great Britain -- History -- Mary I, 1553-1558; Mary I, Queen of England, 1516-1558
On the other hand, twelve noblemen and gentlemen undertook to stand by
Mary if she would arrest Paget and Pembroke. The chancellor, Sir
Robert Rochester, and the Marquis of Winchester {p.136} discussed
the feasibility of seizing them; but Lord Howard and the Channel fleet
were thought to present too formidable an obstacle. With the queen's
sanction, however, they armed in secret. It was agreed that, on one
pretence or another, Derby, Shrewsbury, Sussex, and Huntingdon should
be sent out of London to their counties. Elizabeth, if it could be
managed, should be sent to Pomfret, as Gardiner had before proposed;
Lord Howard should be kept at sea; and, if opportunity offered,
Arundel and Paget might, at least, be secured.[324]
[Footnote 324: Renard to Charles V., May 13:
Tytler, vol. ii.]
But Pomfret was impossible, and vexation thickened on vexation. Lord
Howard was becoming a bugbear at the court. Report now said that two
of the Staffords, whom he had named to command in the fleet, had
joined the exiles in France; and for Lord Howard himself the queen
could feel no security, if he was provoked too far. She was haunted by
a misgiving that, while the prince was under his convoy, he might
declare against her, and carry him prisoner to France; or if Howard
could himself be trusted, his fleet could not. On the eve of sailing
for the coast of Spain, a mutiny broke out at Plymouth. The sailors
swore that if they were forced on a service which they detested, both
the admiral and the prince should rue it. Lord Howard, in reporting to
the queen the men's misconduct, said that his own life was at her
majesty's disposal, but he advised her to reconsider the prudence of
placing the prince in their power. Howard's own conduct, too, was far
from reassuring. A few small vessels had been sent from Antwerp to
join the English fleet, under the Flemish admiral Chappelle. Chappelle
complained that Howard treated him with indifference, and insulted his
ships by "calling them cockle-shells." If the crews of the two fleets
were on land anywhere together, the English lost no opportunity of
making a quarrel, "hustling and pushing" the Flemish sailors;[325]
and, as if finally to complete the queen's vexation, Lord Bedford
wrote that the prince declined the protection of her subjects on his
voyage, and that his departure was postponed for a few weeks longer.
[Footnote 325: Les ont provoque a debatz, les
cerrans et poulsans.--Renard to Charles V.: Tyler
vol. ii. p. 413.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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