n no traitor, but as true a woman to the
queen's majesty as any is now living, and thereon will I take my
death." She threw herself down upon a wet stone; Lord Chandos begged
her to come under shelter out of the rain: "better sitting here than
in a worse place," she cried; "I know not whither you will bring me."

But it was not in Elizabeth's nature to protract a vain resistance;
she rose, and passed on, and as she approached the room intended for
her, the heavy doors along the corridor were locked and barred behind
her. At the grating of the iron bolts the heart of Lord Sussex sank in
him: Sussex knew the queen's true feelings, and the efforts which were
made to lash her into {p.127} cruelty; "What mean ye, my lords," he
said to Chandos and Gage, "what will you do?" "she was a king's
daughter, and is the queen's sister; go no further than your
commission, which I know what it is."[293]

[Footnote 293: Contemporary Narrative: _Harleian
MSS._ 419. _Chronicle of Queen Mary_, p. 71.
Holinshed.]

The chief danger was of murder--of some swift desperate act which
could not be undone; the lords who had so reluctantly permitted
Elizabeth to be imprisoned would not allow her to be openly
sacrificed, or indeed permit the queen to continue in the career of
vengeance on which she had entered. The executions on account of the
rebellion had not ceased even yet. In Kent, London, and in the midland
counties, day after day, one, two, or more persons had been put to
death; six gentlemen were, at that very moment, on their way to
Maidstone and Rochester to suffer. The lords, on the day of
Elizabeth's committal, held a meeting while Gardiner was engaged
elsewhere; they determined to remonstrate, and, if necessary, to
insist on a change of course, and Paget undertook to be the bearer of
the message. He found Mary in her oratory after vespers; he told her
that the season might remind a sovereign of other duties besides
revenge; already too much blood had been shed; the noble house of
Suffolk was all but destroyed; and he said distinctly that if she
attempted any more executions, he and his friends would interfere; the
hideous scenes had lasted too long, and, as an earnest of a return to
mercy, he demanded the pardon of the six gentlemen.

Mary, as she lamented afterwards to Renard, was unprepared; she was
pressed in terms which showed that those who made the request did not
intend