ord
Howard himself, keeping watch with the guard: neither force nor skill
could make a way into the city by London Bridge.

The course which he should follow was determined for him. The
lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Brydges, a soldier and a Catholic,
had looked over the water with angry eyes at the insurgents collected
within reach of his guns, and had asked the queen for permission to
fire upon them. The queen, afraid of provoking the people, had
hitherto refused; on the Monday, however, a Tower boat, passing the
Southwark side of the water, was hailed by Wyatt's sentries; the
watermen refused to stop, the sentries fired, and one of the men in
the boat was killed. The next morning (February 6) (whether permission
had been given at last, or not, was never known), the guns on the
White Tower, the Devil's Tower, and all the bastions, were loaded and
aimed, and notice was sent over that the fire was about to open. The
inhabitants addressed themselves, in agitation, to Wyatt; and Wyatt,
with a sudden resolution, half felt to be desperate, resolved to march
for Kingston Bridge, cross the Thames, and come back on London. His
friends in the city promised to receive him, could he reach Ludgate by
daybreak on Wednesday.

On Tuesday morning, therefore, Shrove Tuesday, which the queen had
hoped to spend more happily than in facing an army of insurgents,
Wyatt, accompanied by not more than fifteen hundred men, pushed out of
Southwark. He had cannon with {p.105} him, which delayed his march,
but at four in the afternoon he reached Kingston. Thirty feet of the
bridge were broken away, and a guard of three hundred men were on the
other side; but the guard fled after a few rounds from the guns, and
Wyatt, leaving his men to refresh themselves in the town, went to work
to repair the passage. A row of barges lay on the opposite bank; three
sailors swam across, attached ropes to them, and towed them over; and,
the barges being moored where the bridge was broken, beams and planks
were laid across them, and a road was made of sufficient strength to
bear the cannon and the waggons.

By eleven o'clock at night the river was crossed, and the march was
resumed. The weather was still wild, the roads miry and heavy, and
through the winter night the motley party plunged along. The Rochester
men had, most of them, gone home, and those who remained were the
London deserters, gentlemen who had compromised themselves too deeply
to hope for par