keeping of her
person?

[Footnote 289: Holinshed says that a certain lord
exclaimed that there would be no safety for the
realm until Elizabeth's head was off her shoulders;
and either Holinshed himself, or his editor, wrote
in the margin opposite, the words: "The wicked
advice of Lord Paget."--Renard describes so
distinctly the attitude of Paget, that there can be
no doubt whatever of the injustice of such a charge
against him.]

The guardian of Elizabeth would be exposed to a hundred dangers and a
thousand suspicions; the lords answered that Gardiner was conspiring
their destruction. No one could be found courageous enough to
undertake the charge, and they gave their reluctant consent to his
demand. The same night Elizabeth's attendants were removed, a hundred
soldiers were picketed in the garden below her window, and on Saturday
morning (March 17) the Marquis of Winchester and Lord Sussex waited on
her to communicate her destination, and to attend her to a barge.

The terrible name of the Tower was like a death-knell; the princess
entreated a short delay till she could write a few words to the queen;
the queen could not know the truth, she said, or else she was played
upon by Gardiner. Alas! she did not know the queen: Winchester
hesitated; Lord Sussex, more generous, accepted the risk, and
promised, on his knees, to place her letter in the queen's hands.

The very lines traced by Elizabeth in that bitter moment may still be
read in the State Paper Office,[290] and her hand was more than
usually firm.

[Footnote 290: _MS. Mary, Domestic_, vol. iv.
Printed by Ellis, 2nd series, vol. ii. p. 255.]

"If ever any one," she wrote, "did try this old saying that a king's
word was more than another man's oath, I most humbly beseech your
majesty to verify it in me, and to remember your last promise, and my
last demand, that I be not condemned without answer and due proof,
which it seems that I now am: for that without cause proved I am by
your council from you commanded to go unto the Tower, a place more
wonted for a false traitor than a true subject: which, though I know I
deserve it not, yet in the face of all this realm appears that it is
proved; which I pray God that I may die the shamefullest death that
any d