ter there was no treason, yet it indicated a suspicious correspondence. The cypher, could it be read, might be expected to contain decisive evidence against her.[1]
Saturday,
Jan. 27.Meantime the herald had not been admitted into Rochester. He had read the Queen's message on the bridge, and, being answered by Wyatt's followers that they required no pardon, for they had done no wrong, he retired. Sir George Harper, who was joint commander with Wyatt, stole away the same evening to Gravesend, and presented himself to Norfolk. The rebels, he said, were discontented and irresolute; for himself he desired to accept the Queen's pardon, which he was ready to earn by doing service against them; if the Duke would advance without delay, he would find no resistance, and Wyatt would fall into his hands.
Jan. 28.The London bands arrived the following afternoon, and Norfolk determined to take Harper's advice. The weather was 'very terrible.'
- ↑ A letter from Gardiner to Sir William Petre is in the State Paper Office, part of which he wrote with the cypher open under his eyes in the first heat of the discovery. The breadth and depth of the pen-strokes express the very pulsation of his passion:—'As I was in hand with other matters,' the paragraph runs, 'was delivered such letters as in times past I durst not have opened; but now, somewhat heated with these treasons, I waxed bolder, wherein I trust I shall be borne with; wherein hap helpeth me, for they be worth the breaking up an I could wholly decypher them, wherein I will spend somewhat of my leisure, if I can have any. But this appeareth, that the letter written from my Lady Elizabeth to the Queen's Highness, now late in her excuse, is taken a matter worthy to be sent into France; for I have the copy of it in the French Ambassador's packet. I will know what can be done in the decyphering, and to-morrow remit that I cannot do unto you.'—Gardiner to Petre: MS. Mary, Domestic, State Paper Office.
