however, unanimity was at an end. The paragraph about the succession in the Queen's speech being obviously aimed at Elizabeth, produced such an irritation in the council, as well as in Parliament, that Renard expected it would end in actual armed conflict.[1]
From the day of Elizabeth's imprisonment Gardiner had laboured to extort evidence against her by fair means or foul.[2] She had been followed to the Tower by her servants. Sir John Gage desired that her food should be dressed by people of his own. The servants refused to allow themselves to be displaced,[3] and, to the distress of Renard, angry words had been addressed to Gage by Lord Howard, so that they could not be removed by force.[4]
The temptation of life having failed, after all, to induce Wyatt to enlarge his confession beyond his first acknowledgments, it was determined to execute him. April 11.On the 11th of April he was brought out of his cell, and on his way to the scaffold he was confronted with Courtenay, to whom he said something, but how much or what it is impossible to ascertain.[5]
- ↑ Y a telle confusion que l'on n'attend sinon que la querelle se demesle par les armes et tumults.—Renard to Charles V., April 22.
- ↑ Holinshed says, Edmund Tremayne was racked, and I have already quoted Gardiner's letter to Petre, suggesting the racking of 'little Wyatt.'
- ↑ Her Grace's cook said to him, My Lord, I will never suffer any stranger to come about her diet but her own sworn men as long as I live.—Harleian MSS. 419, and see Holinshed.
- ↑ L'Admiral s'est coleré au grand chamberlain de la Royne que a la garde de la dicte Elizabeth et luy a dit qu'elle feroit encores trancher tant de testes que luy et autres s'en repentiroient.—Renard to Charles V., April 7: Rolls House MSS.
- ↑ Lord Chandos stated the same day in the House of Lords that he
