It was during Wyatt’s rebellion that the Tower was attacked for the last time in its history. Wyatt had defeated a force commanded by the old Duke of Norfolk and Sir Henry Jerningham, at Rochester, and from thence marched on to Gravesend, where he was met by some members of the Privy Council who had been sent to find out the exact nature of his demands: “The custody of the Tower, and the Queen within it!” was his modest request. [Illustration: _Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk_ (_From the portrait by Joannes Corvus in the National Portrait Gallery._)] Mary, cruel and bigoted as she was, had inherited the courage of the Tudors, and as Wyatt approached the City, resolutely refused to take shelter in the Tower as she was strongly urged to do, offering a pension of one hundred pounds a year (about £1000 of our money value) to any one who would bring her Wyatt’s head. On the 3rd of February he arrived opposite to the Tower, cannonading the fortress from the Southwark side of the river, but without causing any hurt either to the buildings or to their defenders. In attempting to cross the river at London Bridge he was driven back, practically being compelled to retreat along the Southwark side as far as Kingston, where was the only other bridge by which he could gain the City and the Tower. Crossing this bridge, Wyatt now marched to the east upon a dark and stormy night; his men were worn out with fatigue, their spirits dashed by the recent repulse, and the consequence was that they melted away in shoals. Very few remained with him when he encountered the Royal troops drawn up at Hyde Park to bar his passage, and although he succeeded in pushing his way through the soldiers with a handful of his friends, he sank down utterly exhausted when he reached Temple Bar. The gate of the Bar was closed and he and his companions were immediately taken prisoners by Sir Maurice Berkeley. There is a lengthy list of prisoners who were brought with Wyatt into the Tower, or shortly after his arrest. Amongst these were, Sir William Cobham and his brother George Cobham; Hugh Booth, Thomas Vane, Robert Rudstone, Sir George Harper, Edward Wyatt, Edward Fog, George Moore, Cuthbert Vaughan, Sir Henry Isley, two Culpeppers, and Thomas Rampton, who had been Suffolk’s secretary. Wyatt was beheaded on the 11th of February, the day before Lady Jane Grey and her husband, stoutly maintaining to the end, even under the torture of the rack, that Elizabeth had had no cognisance of his insurrection and had played no part in it as Queen Mary suspected. With all these prisoners the headsman and the hangman of the Tower had a busy time, and blood flowed freely on Tower Hill in the springtime of 1555. Some of these prisoners were, however, executed out of London. Sir Henry Isley and his brother suffered at Maidstone, the Knevets at Sevenoaks, and Bret, who had cannonaded the Tower during Wyatt’s rebellion, was hanged in chains at Rochester.