CHAPTER I.

QUEEN JANE AND QUEEN MARY.

On the 7th of July the death of Edward VI. was ushered in with signs
and wonders, as if heaven and earth were in labour with revolution.
The hail lay upon the grass in the London gardens as red as blood. At
Middleton Stony in Oxfordshire, anxious lips reported that a child had
been born with one body, two heads, four feet and hands.[1] About the
time when the letters patent were signed there came a storm such as no
living Englishman remembered. The summer evening grew black as night.
Cataracts of water flooded the houses in the city and turned the
streets into rivers; trees were torn up by the roots and whirled
through the air, and a more awful omen--the forked lightning--struck
down the steeple of the church where the heretic service had been read
for the first time.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Grey Friars' Chronicle_: Machyn.]

[Footnote 2: Baoardo's _History of the Revolution
in England on the Death of Edward VI._, printed at
Venice, 1558. A copy of this rare book is in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford.]

The king died a little before nine o'clock on Thursday evening. His
death was made a secret; but in the same hour a courier was galloping
through the twilight to Hunsdon to bid Mary mount and fly. Her plans
had been for some days prepared. She had been directed to remain
quiet, but to hold herself ready to be up and away at a moment's
warning. The lords who were to close her in would not be at their
posts, and for a few hours the roads would be open. The Howards were
looking for her in Norfolk; and thither she was to ride at her best
speed, proclaiming her accession as she went along, and sending out
her letters calling loyal Englishmen to rise in her defence.

So Mary's secret friends had instructed her to act as her one chance.
Mary, who, like all the Tudors, was most herself in the moments of
greatest danger, followed a counsel boldly which agreed with her own
opinion; and when Lord Robert Dudley {p.002} came in the morning
with a company of horse to look for her, she was far away. Relays of
horses along the road, and such other precautions as could be taken
without exciting suspicion, had doubtless not been overlooked.

Far different advice had been sent to her by the new ambassadors of
the emperor. Scheyfne, who understood England and English habits, and
who was sanguine of