Note (Back to Main Text) — Chapter II · THE SPANISH MARRIAGE.

They would, perhaps, have still delayed till they had received authentic accounts from Devonshire; but the arrest of Sir Edmund Warner, and one or two others, assured them that too much of their projects had transpired; and on the 22nd of January Sir Thomas Wyatt called a meeting of his friends at Allingham Castle, on the Medway. The commons of Kent were the same brave, violent, and inflammable people whom John Cade, a century before, had led to London; the country gentlemen were generally under Wyatt's influence. Sir R. Southwell, the sheriff for the year, had been among the loudest objectors in parliament to the marriage; and if Southwell joined in the rising he would bring with him Lord Abergavenny.[211] Lord Cobham, Wyatt's uncle, was known to wish him well. Sir Thomas Cheyne, the only other person of weight in the county, would be loyal to the queen, but Wyatt had tampered with his tenants; Cheyne could bring a thousand men into the field, but they would desert when led out, and there was nothing to fear from them. Whether Southwell and Cobham would act openly on Wyatt's side was the chief uncertainty; it was feared that Southwell might desire to keep within the limits of loyal opposition; Cobham offered to send his sons, but "the sending of sons," some member of the meeting said, "was the casting away of the Duke of Northumberland; their lives were as dear to them as my Lord Cobham's was to him; let him come himself and set his foot by them."[212] The result of the conference was a determination to make the venture. Thursday the 25th was the day agreed on for the rising, and the gentlemen present went in their several directions to prepare the people.