564
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[ch. 27.
They issued a circular, expressing a fear that she was in correspondence with foreign powers who contemplated an invasion of England, and they called upon her to appear at the Court and explain herself.[1] Mary obeyed. In the midst of a demonstration indeed, but not such as the Lords had hoped and desired, she rode into London surrounded by a retinue of peers, knights, and gentlemen, every one ostentatiously wearing a chain of beads. March.After resting two days at a house at St John's, she went in the same state
- ↑ 'This her doing' (her change of residence from Essex to Hertfordshire) 'we be sorry for, both for the evil opinion the King's Majesty our master may thereby conceive of her, and for that by the same doth appear manifestly the malicious rancour of such as provoke her thus to breed and stir up, as much as in her lyeth, occasions of disorder and unquiet in the realm, wherein we know there lacketh not both labour and means of those that be strangers to this realm, and would gladly have the realm so disordered in itself, that it might be a prey to the foreign nations; which thing, as God hath hitherto defended, so we nothing doubt but that, through his grace conserving us by obedience to our master in concord, we shall always, as true and mere Englishmen, keep our country to bo England, without putting our heads under Spaniards' or Flemmings' girdles, as their slaves and vassals. It is not unknown to us, but some near about the Lady Mury have very lately, in the night season, had privy conference with the Emperor's ambassador here being, which counsels can in no wise tend to the weal of the King's Majesty our master in his realm, nor to the nobility of the realm. Wherefore, since these be the unseemly proceedings of the Lady Mary, and as it should appear, set forward by strangers to make some disorders of the people in the realm, knowing how of late years the base sort of people have been evil-inclined to rebellion, we do, in the King's Majesty's behalf, most earnestly desire you to see to the order of your counties, and prevent any disturbance arising among the people. The effect whereof, if her councillors should procure, as it must be to her Grace and to all other good Englishmen therein seduced, damnable, so shall it be most hurtful to the good subjects of the country.'—Circular of the Lords of the Council: MS. State Paper Office, March, 1551.
