Suffolk had done no better in the Midlands. Authorities are divided as to his intentions. By Dr. Lingard it is considered uncertain whether he meant to press Elizabeth’s claims or to revive those of his daughter. With either upon the throne the dominance of the Protestant religion would have been ensured, and, unlike Northumberland, Suffolk was sincere and honest in his attachment to the principles of the Reformation. Other writers, however, assert categorically that he caused Lady Jane to be proclaimed at his halting-places as he went north; and the sequel seems to make it probable that she had been once more forced into a position of dangerous prominence.
Whatever may have been the exact nature of the scheme he propounded, the country made no response to his appeal; after a skirmish near Coventry he gave up hopes of any immediate success, disbanded his followers, and, betrayed by a tenant upon whose fidelity he had believed he could count, fell into the hands of those in pursuit of him. By February 10 he had gone to swell the numbers of the prisoners in the Tower.
The rising in Kent had alone answered in any degree to the expectations of its promoters. Drawn into the conspiracy, if his own assertions are to be credited, by Courtenay, Wyatt had become the most conspicuous leader of the insurrection known by his name. He was well fitted for the post. Brave, skilful, and secret, he was, says Noailles, “un gentilhomme le plus vaillant et assuré que j’ai jamais ouï parler”; and whether or not he had been deserted by the man to whom it was due that he had taken up arms, he was not disposed to submit to defeat without a struggle.
Fixing his headquarters at Rochester, he had gathered together a body of some fifteen thousand men, and was there found by the Duke of Norfolk, sent at the head of the Queen’s forces against him. The utmost enthusiasm prevailed amongst the insurgents, and when a herald arrived in Rochester commissioned by the Duke to proclaim a pardon for all who would consent to lay down arms, “each man cried that they had done nothing wherefore they should need any pardon, and that quarrel which they took they would die and live in it.”[211] Sir George Harper was in fact the sole rebel who accepted the proffered boon.