1554.]
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.
327
Cheyne threw himself into Dover Castle: Southwell and Abergavenny held to the Queen as had been feared. Abergavenny raised two thousand men, and attacked and dispersed a party of insurgents under Sir Henry Isly on Wrotham Heath; but Abergavenny's followers deserted him immediately afterwards, and marched to Rochester to Wyatt. Southwell could do nothing; he believed that the rebellion would spread to London, and that Mary would be lost.[1]
Jan. 26.On the 26th, Wyatt, being master of Rochester and the Medway, seized the Queen's ships that were in the river, took possession of their guns and ammunition, proclaimed Abergavenny, Southwell, and another gentleman traitors to the commonwealth,[2] and set himself to organize the force which continued to pour in upon him. Messengers, one after another, hurried to London with worse and worse news; Northampton was arrested and sent to the Tower, but Suffolk and his brothers were gone; and, after all which had- ↑ Southwell to Sir William Petre: MS. Mary, Domestic, State Paper Office.
- ↑ 'You shall understand that Henry Lord of Abergavenny; Robert Southwell, knight, and George Clarke, gentleman, have most traitorously, to the disturbance of the commonwealth, stirred and raised up the Queen's most loving subjects of this realm, to [maintain the] most wicked and devilish enterprise of certain wicked and perverse councillors, to the utter confusion of this her Grace's realm, and the perpetual servitude of all her most loving subjects. In consideration whereof, we Sir Thos. Wyatt, knight, Sir George Harper, knight, Anthony Knyvet, esq., with all the faithful gentlemen of Kent, with the trusty commons of the same, do pronounce and declare the said Henry Lord of Abergavenny, Robert Southwell, and George Clarke to be traitors to God, the Crown, and the commonwealth.'—MS. Ibid.
