atch, with the
dread of the holders of Church lands that their possessions were in
danger, encouraged the more violent to plan a rising; and France,
naturally jealous of an increase of power by its great opponent,
promised to support them by an incursion from Scotland and an attack on
Calais. The real aim of the rebellion was, no doubt, the displacement of
Mary, and the setting either of Jane Grey, or, as the bulk of the
Protestants desired, of Elizabeth, on the throne. But these hopes were
cautiously hidden; and the conspirators declared their aim to be that of
freeing the Queen from evil counsellors, and of preventing her union
with the Prince of Spain. The plan combined three simultaneous outbreaks
of revolt. Sir Peter Carew engaged to raise the west, the Duke of
Suffolk to call the midland counties to arms, while Sir Thomas Wyatt led
the Kentishmen on London. The rising was planned for the spring of 1554.
But the vigilance of the Government drove it to a premature explosion in
January, and baffled it in the centre and the west. Carew fled to
France; Suffolk, who appeared in arms at Leicester, found small response
from the people, and was soon sent prisoner to the Tower. The Kentish
rising however proved a more formidable danger. A cry that the Spaniards
were coming "to conquer the realm" drew thousands to Wyatt's standard.
The ships in the Thames submitted to be seized by the insurgents. A
party of the train-bands of London, who marched with the royal guard
under the old Duke of Norfolk against them, deserted to the rebels in a
mass with shouts of "A Wyatt! a Wyatt! we are all Englishmen!"

[Sidenote: Its failure.]

Had the Kentishmen moved quickly on the capital, its gates would have
been flung open and success would have been assured. But at the critical
moment Mary was saved by her queenly courage. Riding boldly to the
Guildhall she appealed with "a man's voice" to the loyalty of the
citizens, and denounced the declaration of Wyatt's followers as "a
Spanish cloak to cover their purpose against our religion." She pledged
herself, "on the word of a Queen, that if it shall not probably appear
to all the nobility and commons in the high court of Parliament that
this marriage shall be for the high benefit and commodity of all the
whole realm, then will I abstain from marriage while I live." The pledge
was a momentous one, for it owned the very claim of the two Houses which
the Queen had till now haughtily rejected; a