rebels were storming in when his servants forced him to surrender. The house was pillaged; an oath was thrust on Cobham that he would join, which he took with the intention of breaking it; and the rebels, perhaps seeing cause to distrust him, carried him off to Wyatt as a prisoner.[1] That night the insurgents rested at Gravesend. Jan. 31.The next day they reached Dartford. Their actual numbers were insignificant, but their strength was the disaffection of London, where the citizens were too likely to follow the example which had been set at Rochester.
Mary's situation was now really alarming: she was without money, notwithstanding the Jews: she had no troops; of all her ministers Paget alone was sincerely anxious to do her service; for Gardiner, on the subject of the marriage, was as unwilling as ever. It was rumoured that the King of Denmark intended to unite with the French in support of the revolutionists, and Renard began calmly to calculate that, should this report prove true, the Queen could not be saved. Pembroke and Clinton offered to raise another force in the
- ↑ He contrived to send a letter to the Queen the evening of the day on which his house was taken. After describing the scene, he added: 'If your Grace will assemble forces in convenient numbers, they not being above 2000 men, and yet not 500 of them able and good armed men, but rascals and rakehells such as live by spoil, I doubt not but your Grace shall have the victory.'—Cobham to the Queen: MS. State Paper Office. But Cobham under-estimated the numbers, and undervalued the composition of Wyatt's forces, perhaps intentionally. Renard, who is generally accurate, says that the rebels at this time amounted to three thousand; Noailles says, twelve or fifteen thousand.
