The Reign of Mary Tudor | Page 5

little before nine o'clock on Thursday evening. His death was made a secret; but in the same hour a courier was galloping through the twilight to Hunsdon to bid Mary mount and fly. Her plans had been for some days prepared. She had been directed to remain quiet, but to hold herself ready to be up and away at a moment's warning. The lords who were to close her in would not be at their posts, and for a few hours the roads would be open. The Howards were looking for her in Norfolk; and thither she was to ride at her best speed, proclaiming her accession as she went along, and sending out her letters calling loyal Englishmen to rise in her defence.
So Mary's secret friends had instructed her to act as her one chance. Mary, who, like all the Tudors, was most herself in the moments of greatest danger, followed a counsel boldly which agreed with her own opinion; and when Lord Robert Dudley {p.002} came in the morning with a company of horse to look for her, she was far away. Relays of horses along the road, and such other precautions as could be taken without exciting suspicion, had doubtless not been overlooked.
Far different advice had been sent to her by the new ambassadors of the emperor. Scheyfne, who understood England and English habits, and who was sanguine of her success, had agreed to a course which had probably been arranged in concert with him; but on the 6th, the day of Edward's death, Renard and M. de Couri��res arrived from Brussels. To Renard, accustomed to countries where governments were everything and peoples nothing, for a single woman to proclaim herself queen in the face of those who had the armed force of the kingdom in their hands, appeared like madness. Little confidence could be placed in her supposed friends, since they had wanted resolution to refuse their signatures to the instrument of her deposition. The emperor could not move; although he might wish well to her cause, the alliance of England was of vital importance to him, and he would not compromise himself with the faction whose success, notwithstanding Scheyfne's assurance, he looked upon as certain. Renard, therefore, lost not a moment in entreating the princess not to venture upon a course from which he anticipated inevitable ruin. If the nobility or the people desired to have her for queen, they would make her queen. There was no need for her to stir.[3] The remonstrance agreed {p.003} fully with the opinion of Charles himself, who replied to Renard's account of his conduct with complete approval of it.[4] The emperor's power was no longer equal to an attitude of menace; he had been taught, by the repeated blunders of Reginald Pole, to distrust accounts of popular English sentiment; and he disbelieved entirely in the ability of Mary and her friends to cope with a conspiracy so broadly contrived, and supported by the countenance of France.[5] But Mary was probably gone from Hunsdon before advice arrived, to which she had been lost if she had listened. She had ridden night and day without a halt for a hundred miles to Keninghal, a castle of the Howards on the Waveney river. There, in safe hands, she would try the effect of an appeal to her country. If the nation was mute, she would then escape to the Low Countries.[6]
[Footnote 3: Avant nostre arriv��e elle mist en delib��ration avec aulcungs de ses plus confidens ce qu'elle debvroit faire, advenant la dicte morte; la quelle treuva, que incontinant la dicte morte decouverte, elle se debvoit publier royne par lettres et escriptz, et qu'en ce faisant, elle conciteroit plusieurs �� se d��clairer pour la maintenir telle, (et aussy que y a quelque observance par de ?�� que celuy ou celle qui est appel�� �� la couronne se doit incontinent tel d��clairer et publier) pour la haine qu'ilz portent audict duc, le tenant tiran et indigne; s'estant absolument resolue qu'elle debvoit suyvre ceste conclusion et conseil, aultrement elle tomberoit en danger de sa personne plus grand qu'elle n'est et perdroit l'espoir de parvenir �� la couronne. La quelle conclusion avons treuv�� estrange, difficile, et dangereuse, pour les raisons soubzcriptes: pour aultant que toutes les forces du pays sont ��s mains dudict duc: que la dicte dame n'a espoir de contraires forces ny d'assistance pour donner pied �� ceulx qu'ilz adh��rer luy vouldroient; que se publiant royne, le roy et royne d��sign��s par le dict testament (encores qu'il soit mal) prendroient fondement, de l'invahir par la force et que n'y aura moien d'y r��sister si vostre majest�� ne s'en empesche; ce que avons pes�� pour les grands affaires et empeschemens qu'elle a contre les Fran?oys et en divers lieux, que ne semble convenir que