government of this realm to be proclaimed in
our city of London, and such other places as to your wisdom shall seem
good, and as to this cause appertaineth, not failing hereof, as our
very trust is in you; and this our letter, signed with our own hand,
shall be your sufficient warrant."[16]

[Footnote 16: Holinshed.]

The lords, when the letter was read to the end, looked uneasily in
each other's faces. The ladies screamed, sobbed, and were carried off
in hysterics. There was yet time to turn back; and had the Reformation
been, as he pretended, the true concern of the Duke of Northumberland,
he would have brought Mary back himself, bound by conditions which, in
her present danger, she would have accepted. But Northumberland cared
as little for religion as for any other good thing. He was a great
criminal, throwing a stake for a crown; and treason is too conscious
of its guilt to believe retreat from the first step to be possible.

Another blow was in store for him that night, before he laid his head
upon his pillow. Lady Jane, knowing nothing of the letter from Mary,
had retired to her apartment, when the Marquis of Winchester came in
to wish her joy. He had brought the crown with him, which she had not
sent for; he desired her to put it on, and see if it required
alteration. She said it would do very well as it was. He then told her
that, before her coronation, another crown was to be made for her
husband. Lady Jane started; and it seemed as if for the first time the
dreary {p.010} suspicion crossed her mind that she was, after all,
but the puppet of the ambition of the duke to raise his family to the
throne. Winchester retired, and she sat indignant[17] till Guilford
Dudley appeared, when she told him that, young as she was, she knew
that the crown of England was not a thing to be trifled with. There
was no Dudley in Edward's will, and, before he could be crowned, the
consent of Parliament must be first asked and obtained. The
boy-husband went whining to his mother, while Jane sent for Arundel
and Pembroke, and told them that it was not for her to appoint kings.
She would make her husband a duke if he desired it; that was within
her prerogative; but king she would not make him. As she was speaking,
the Duchess of Northumberland rushed in with her son, fresh from the
agitation of Mary's letter. The mother stormed; Guilford cried like a
spoilt child that he would be no duke, he would be a king: and,