nd with the remonstrance of
the Parliament still fresh in their ears the Londoners may well have
believed that the marriage-project would come quietly to an end. The
dread too of any change in religion by the return of the violent
Protestantism of Edward's day could hardly fail to win Mary support
among the citizens. The mayor answered for their loyalty, and when Wyatt
appeared on the Southwark bank the bridge was secured against him. But
the rebel leader knew that the issue of the revolt hung on the question
which side London would take, and that a large part of the Londoners
favoured his cause. Marching therefore up the Thames he seized a bridge
at Kingston, threw his force across the river, and turned rapidly back
on the capital. But a night march along miry roads wearied and
disorganized his men; the bulk of them were cut off from their leader by
a royal force which had gathered in the fields at what is now Hyde Park
Corner, and only Wyatt himself with a handful of followers pushed
desperately on past the palace of St. James, whence the Queen refused to
fly even while the rebels were marching beneath its walls, along the
Strand to Ludgate. "I have kept touch," he cried as he sank exhausted at
the gate. But it was closed: his adherents within were powerless to
effect their promised diversion in his favour; and as he fell back the
daring leader was surrounded at Temple Bar and sent to the Tower.

[Sidenote: The marriage.]

The failure of the revolt was fatal to the girl whom part at least of
the rebels would have placed on the throne. Lady Jane Grey, who had till
now been spared and treated with great leniency, was sent to the block;
and her father, her husband, and her uncle, atoned for the ambition of
the House of Suffolk by the death of traitors. Wyatt and his chief
adherents followed them to execution, while the bodies of the poorer
insurgents were dangling on gibbets round London. Elizabeth, who had
with some reason been suspected of complicity in the insurrection, was
sent to the Tower; and only saved from death by the interposition of the
Council. The leading Protestants fled in terror over sea. But the
failure of the revolt did more than crush the Protestant party; it
enabled the Queen to lay aside the mask of moderation which had been
forced on her by the earlier difficulties of her reign. An order for the
expulsion of all married clergy from their cures, with the deprivation
of nine bishops who had been app