London in those days must have looked like some vast Golgotha. Gibbets were placed in all the principal streets, each bearing its ghastly load; and the decapitated heads and limbs of Queen Mary’s victims were stuck over many gates of the town, standing up in horrid clusters, especially on London Bridge, the air being tainted far and near with these grisly fragments of mortality. London had indeed been turned into a shamble; it had become a veritable city of blood, a precursor of an African Benin. Whilst these scenes were taking place in her capital, Mary wedded Philip of Spain at Winchester, vainly attempting to make herself attractive to that morose prince. From some words let fall, it is said by Wyatt, Mary ordered three members of the Privy Council to go to Ashbridge in Hertfordshire where her half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth, was then living in a state of semi-captivity. These three Privy Councillors were Sir Richard Southwell, Sir Edward Hastings, and Sir Thomas Cornwallis; they were accompanied by a guard of two hundred and fifty horsemen. On arriving late at night at Ashbridge they were told that the Princess was ill and was in bed, but they nevertheless forced their way into her bedroom. “Is the haste such,” cried Elizabeth, “that you could not have waited till the morning?” Their answer was that they had orders to bring her hence, dead or alive, and early the next morning she was taken in a litter by short stages to London, the journey, however, taking six days to accomplish, the people showing the Princess the most marked sympathy as she passed along the roads. On reaching Whitehall, Elizabeth was closely confined, being examined there by the Council; a fortnight later she was taken by water to the Tower and landed at Traitor’s Gate. Her proud attitude and indignant words on leaving her barge are well known, but, like most of her recorded sayings, are well worth repeating:—“Here landeth,” she exclaimed on putting her foot on the stone steps of that historic gate, “as true a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs, and before thee, O God, I speak it, having none other friends but thee.” She then seated herself, in spite of the heavy rain then falling, on a stone—some accounts have it on the steps themselves—saying with true Tudor determination, “Better sit here than in a worse place.” And it was not until the Gentleman Usher burst into tears that she could be induced to rise and enter her prison. [Illustration: _Middle Tower_]