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Then with a passionate embrace of his son, Guilford, Northumberland went to finish his preparations for the resisting of Mary’s claim, and on Friday, the fourteenth, he and his followers rode proudly forth with a train of guns, and six hundred men, some of them the greatest in the land. As they passed through the city, they could not but notice the sullenness and lack of enthusiasm in the great crowds everywhere gathered to watch them pass, and grew more and more fearful of the probable defeat of the Duke’s project.

Meanwhile Queen Jane, in the Tower, passed the weary hours as best she could, and executed several minor duties of her royal office, but grew hourly more depressed with a nameless dread, and at evening came the news of a great rising in favour of Queen Mary. Still worse tidings came on Saturday, the sixth day of Jane’s disastrous reign. Queen Mary had already been proclaimed at Framlington and Norwich, and Northumberland had sent to London for fresh troops, and was speeding as fast as horse could gallop towards Cambridge, which he reached at midnight, but in vain! Jane’s cause collapsed so completely and so rapidly everywhere that even such precautions as had been taken for the defence of her party ended by serving her rivals, and the miserable Duke returned to the Tower and its comparative safety, a prisoner, in a pathetic plight brought about by his own wretched ambition.

On the seventh day of Queen Jane’s reign, throughout the length and breadth of England there were again risings for Queen Mary. In all the streets there were cheering and rioting, and bonfires were lighted, around which crowds of rough men and women circled, shouting, “Queen Mary! Queen Mary!” while in the churches the rival queens and rival creeds were the one subject of discourse.

On the eighth day of Jane’s reign there was a violent scene in the early morning between her mother and mother-in-law concerning the kingship of Guilford, as Jane’s husband. Poor Jane cried herself sick over the distasteful affair, and tried to calm and reason with the two disputants, looking more dead than alive as she did so. By this time as a result of suspense and discouraging news all the occupants of the Tower were at sixes and sevens, and the general feeling was that a worse situation was still to come. Again bad news, the peasants, notwithstanding the threats of their lords, had refused to take up arms against Mary, and were drawing very near London; also all over the country the nobility were arming, and marching in the defence of the rightful queen’s person and title, while poor Queen Jane’s name was now only spoken to be scoffed at.

On Tuesday, the eighteenth, it was evident to all that the tragi-comedy was drawing to a close. Of all Queen Jane’s Council only two men, Archbishop Cranmer and her own father, remained true to her–all the others having decided to save their own heads by betraying the cause of that girl to whom nine days before they had pledged undying loyalty. On Wednesday, the nineteenth, the short reign ended. “Jane the Queen” became ” Jana non Regina,” and although that morning there was a slight flicker of interest shown in her cause, yet the conspirators against her, that evening proclaimed Mary queen in Cheapside, at the very hour at which only nine days before Jane’s accession had been proclaimed!

The people now realised that they had nothing to fear from Jane or her Council, whose power was broken, and at once gave public vent to their enthusiasm for Mary, indulging in one of those attacks of frenzied excitement which sometimes seizes a nation,–and everywhere there were merry-makings and rejoicings for her Catholic Majesty–except within the Tower, where the stillness of death reigned.

Northumberland’s plan had failed, and of those councillors who had pledged their support to Jane’s cause, but one remained loyal besides her own father!