Note 218 — Chapter XVI · THE LADY JANE IS PROCLAIMED QUEEN
Reading edition
Some historians have represented the warning as coming to Mary by way of the Earl of Arundel; but the statement that it came from the Throckmortons is confirmed by Jardine’s State Trials and Cole’s MS. vol. xl., British Museum. There is a very curious account of the whole proceeding in rough verse by Sir Nicholas Throckmorton himself, of which we give two verses:—
“Mourning, from Greenwich did I straight depart, To London, to a house which bore our name. My brethren guessèd by my heavie hearte, The King was dead, and I confess’d the same: The hushing of his death I didd unfolde, Their meaning to proclaim Queene Jane I tolde. * * * * * Wherefore from four of us the newes was sent. How that her brother hee was dead and gone; In post her goldsmith then from London went, By whom the message was dispatcht anon. Shee asked, ‘If wee knewe it certainlie?’ Who said, ‘Sir Nicholas knew it verilie.’”
See The Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 2; also Bishop Goodman’s Memoirs, p. 161.