The Reign of Mary Tudor | Page 5

the church where the heretic service had been read for the
first time.[2]
[Footnote 1: Grey Friars' Chronicle: Machyn.]
[Footnote 2: Baoardo's History of the Revolution in England on the
Death of Edward VI., printed at Venice, 1558. A copy of this rare book
is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.]
The king died a 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 Courières 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 arrivée elle mist en delibération 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 à se déclairer pour la maintenir telle, (et aussy
que y a quelque observance par de çà que celuy ou celle qui est appelé
à la couronne se doit incontinent tel déclairer 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 à la couronne. La quelle conclusion avons

treuvé estrange, difficile, et dangereuse, pour les raisons soubzcriptes:
pour aultant que toutes les forces du pays sont ès mains dudict duc: que
la dicte dame n'a espoir de contraires forces ny d'assistance pour donner
pied à ceulx qu'ilz adhérer luy vouldroient; que se publiant royne, le