Wyatt's rebellion
Wyatt's Rebellion was an uprising in early 1554 England that nearly toppled a queen and sent a future monarch to the Tower of London. It took its name not from any proclamation by the rebels themselves, but from a lawyer at the arraignment of its leading figure, Thomas Wyatt the Younger, who declared for the record that "this shall be ever called Wyatt's Rebellion." At its heart, the rebellion was a collision of anxieties: fear of a Spanish king consort, fear of the pope's return to the English church, and fear of losing livelihoods built on the favour of a Protestant crown. Four men set it in motion, but thousands were swept into its wake. What drove them to take arms against their queen? What brought the plan to ruin? And what did it cost the man whose name it bore?
On the 16th of November 1553, a Parliamentary delegation travelled formally to Queen Mary I and asked her to choose an English husband. The obvious candidate, left unstated but widely understood, was her kinsman Edward Courtenay, recently made Earl of Devon. Mary refused the implicit suggestion. Her cousin the Emperor Charles V, king of Spain, had already dispatched his minister to England with a counter-proposal: his son Philip, whom Charles presented as a figure the religious and political interests of the world recommended for Mary.
Mary was persuaded that closer ties with the Habsburgs were necessary for England's safety, and she decided to marry Philip. A marriage treaty reached the Privy Council on the 7th of December 1553. Even though the treaty's terms clearly favoured England and included several safeguards, the landed gentry and parliamentary classes feared they would be taxed heavily to fund England's participation in Philip's wars. Many also knew the stories of the Spanish Inquisition. Some had even suffered its rack themselves.
France shared England's alarm. Antoine de Noailles, the French ambassador, threatened war and began immediate intrigues with malcontents he could find. The Venetian ambassador Giacomo Soranzo joined him and was later accused of taking an active part in the rebellion. Before Christmas 1553, anti-Spanish ballads and broadsheets were already moving through the streets of London.
Mary I had watched her father Henry VIII dismantle the authority of Rome over the English church, and she had resented every step. She "bitterly disapproved of the changes made in the form of worship" by Henry and "regarded the cause of the pope as her own." When Edward VI's parliament passed an Act of Uniformity requiring all church services to be in English, Mary continued celebrating the traditional Latin mass in her private chapel. When that was expressly forbidden, Charles V threatened England with war rather than see her practice disturbed.
Mary assumed the throne in July 1553, and on the 18th of August she issued a proclamation that "strictly forbade Protestant preaching." This confirmed the fears of Protestants and alarmed many others who simply did not want the pope restored as head of the English church. Those fears were sharpened further by the prospect of Mary marrying Philip, whom contemporaries described as "the most powerful and the 'most Catholic' sovereign in Europe," although his father did not make him King of Spain until 1556.
Historian David Loades argues that the leading reasons behind the rising were secular and political. Historian Malcolm Thorp counters that, with few exceptions, the leading conspirators were Protestants and that religious concerns were an important part of their decision to oppose Mary. Both were right, because in sixteenth-century England religion and politics could not be cleanly separated.
Thomas Wyatt owned large areas of land in Kent and had great influence there. He had initially supported Mary's accession, but turned against her marriage, warning that it would bring "most miserable servitude, and establish popish religion." He was described as "hot-headed" with a reputation for being wild and impetuous, and had once spent a month in the Tower of London for participating in a street riot. Significantly, he had also helped organise a local militia in Kent, which gave him the means to raise armed forces quickly.
James Croft came from an influential Herefordshire family and had served as Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1551 and 1552. There he had been directed to "set forth God's service, according to our ordinances," which included imposing the Anglican Prayer Book on the Irish church. His motivations were less clearly stated than Wyatt's, but he was already out of favour with Mary well before the rebellion began, giving him strong reason to act.
Peter Carew was a Devon MP and maritime adventurer whom the Spanish ambassador reported to Philip as "the greatest heretic and rebel in England." His contemporary biographer called him "an earnest promoter of God's true religion" and noted his consistent support for the Protestant cause in Parliament. Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, was described as "an hearty Friend unto the Gospel" who continued to profess it until his death. He was also the father of Lady Jane Grey, who had briefly been proclaimed queen after Edward VI died, in a failed attempt to block Mary's accession.
A fifth figure, William Thomas, is viewed by some historians as the original leader of the rebellion. He was a committed Protestant known as a "hot gospeller," and some accounts place him at the centre of the earliest plotting.
Around the 26th of November 1553, a plan began to take shape under Wyatt, Croft, Carew, and Suffolk. By Christmas, they had settled on a coordinated scheme: each leader would raise forces in his own county, and together they would converge on London on the 18th of March 1554, shortly before Philip was expected to leave Spain. Their aim was to replace Mary with her half-sister Elizabeth, who would then marry Courtenay. A fleet of French ships would block Philip from reaching England at all.
An earlier and more violent scheme had also circulated, one involving the assassination of Mary by a man named John FitzWilliams. Wyatt was so opposed to this idea that he reportedly set out to beat FitzWilliams himself when he heard of it. A stranger episode ran alongside the rebellion: a young girl named Elizabeth Croft was reportedly hidden inside the wall of a London house, pretending to be a spirit and denouncing Mary, Philip, and the Catholic mass. She was eventually discovered and confessed her role.
As early as the 29th of December 1553, Spain's ambassador Simon Renard had informed Mary of a suspected plot involving the Tower of London. On the 7th of January 1554, the Privy Council sent a formal summons to Carew in Devon, where he had been making little effort to hide his recruitment activities. The sheriff of Devon told Carew about the letter and gave him time to flee. Carew sold his farm and left for France on the 25th of January. Edward Courtenay was arrested shortly before, and his revelations on the 21st of January were followed by further arrests. It became clear the rebellion could not hold until March.
On the 25th of January 1554, Wyatt raised his standard at Maidstone. Church bells rang and his proclamation was read in the streets, warning that Mary's marriage to Philip would "bring upon this realm most miserable servitude, and establish popish religion." By the 27th of January, he had gathered a force of about 2,000 men at his headquarters in Rochester.
On the 28th of January, a royal force of about 600 men, led by Lord Abergavenny and Sir Robert Southwell, the High Sheriff of Kent, moved to intercept a rebel column of around 500. The rebels were routed, leaving 60 prisoners. But then a force of 500 soldiers known as the Whitecoats, named for their all-white uniforms and sent from London under the elderly Duke of Norfolk, did something unexpected. Instead of attacking the insurgents, the Whitecoats came down the hill to Rochester shouting "We are all Englishmen" and defected to Wyatt. Combined with ships and cannon he had seized, his force now stood at about 3,000.
Mary responded at the Guildhall on the 1st of February, the building full because it was Candlemas. She delivered a speech describing her desire to quell the rebellion by mercy rather than the sword, shared Wyatt's "insolent and proud answere" with those present, and declared herself already married to the people of England. By the next day, some 25,000 were ready to defend her and London. Mary issued a proclamation naming Wyatt a traitor and offered a reward of £100 for his capture, dead or alive.
Wyatt arrived at Southwark on the 2nd of February, intending to cross London Bridge. The drawbridge was down in the water and the gates were shut. The guns of the Tower were trained on Southwark. He moved upstream to Kingston on the 6th of February, marching at night. The bridge there was broken, but his men repaired it. Time lost fixing a broken cannon cost him the element of surprise, and desertion mounted. He reached Ludgate and found it defended. He turned back toward Westminster and ran into more loyal forces. A herald urged him to avoid further bloodshed and earn a pardon. Wyatt surrendered.
A general execution of common prisoners began on the 12th of February 1554, with gallows erected across London. Prisons could not hold all the fugitives, so churches were used as holding spaces. Out of approximately 3,000 captured insurgents, only about 150 were executed; the rest served brief imprisonment and were freed on the 20th of January 1555 at the request of Philip. Lady Jane Grey and her husband Lord Guildford Dudley were also executed on the 12th of February, even though they had played no part in the rebellion. Lady Jane's father, Suffolk, was beheaded six days after her, on the 23rd of February.
Wyatt's own trial was delayed from his surrender on the 7th of February until the 15th of March, partly in the hope of extracting information implicating Elizabeth. He named William St. Loe, Elizabeth's servant, as the person who had initiated the rebellion. At trial he pleaded guilty to treason but claimed he had never intended harm to Mary. He was sentenced to death by hanging, drawing, and quartering. On the 11th of April 1554, before he was hanged, Wyatt stated publicly that neither Elizabeth nor Courtenay had been involved in the rebellion. Acknowledging that he had said otherwise at his trial, he offered the quiet reckoning: "That which I said then I said, but that which I say now is true."
Sir Nicholas Throckmorton stood trial on the 17th of April 1554 charged with high treason, including imagining the death of the queen and conspiring to seize the Tower of London. He became the only insurgent to be acquitted. He challenged second-hand testimony and demanded accusers appear in person; he was refused. He asked that his own Tower testimony be read in full; he was refused again. When the jury returned a unanimous "Not guilty," they were urged to reconsider. The foreman replied that they had reached the verdict "agreeably to all our consciences." Despite the acquittal, Throckmorton was kept in custody on other charges. The jurors who had acquitted him were arrested and held until winter, then released only after paying exorbitant fines.
Elizabeth was not an active participant in the rebellion, but Mary did not know that. On the 26th of January 1554, Mary sent a letter asking Elizabeth to come to court for her own protection; the intent was to arrest her on arrival. Elizabeth declined, citing illness. Mary sent two of her own physicians and three Privy Council members to assess her. They found the illness genuine but declared it need not prevent travel, and Elizabeth was brought to London in stages of no more than eight miles a day, arriving on the 23rd of February, pale and dressed in white, her litter curtains open.
On the 18th of March, Palm Sunday, Elizabeth was imprisoned in the Tower. Council members who supported her were overruled on the question of who would bear responsibility for her safety if she were not confined there. After imprisonment, she was examined again in the presence of Croft, who had been summoned as a witness. As he was led away, Croft knelt before Elizabeth and told her he was sorry to be brought as a witness against her, that he had been "marvellously tossed" during his own examination, and that he denied any attempt to involve her in the rebellion, on pain of death. Elizabeth was released from the Tower on the 19th of May 1554, though kept under continued confinement.
The man who had most aggressively pushed for Elizabeth's punishment was Spain's ambassador Renard. He concluded that Mary's relatively lenient treatment of the rebels made England unsafe for Philip. Charles V, in March 1554, wrote to Mary asking for "immediate and summary" judgement for both Courtenay and Elizabeth. But Elizabeth had powerful friends, including the Lord Admiral of England, and without conclusive proof of her involvement, no action could be taken. Courtenay was sent into exile in Italy, where he died two years later. After Mary's death, Throckmorton served Elizabeth as her ambassador to France and Scotland.
Common questions
What was Wyatt's Rebellion and when did it take place?
Wyatt's Rebellion was a popular uprising in England in early 1554, led primarily by Thomas Wyatt the Younger along with Sir James Croft, Sir Peter Carew, and Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk. It was an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Queen Mary I from marrying Philip of Spain and to replace her with her half-sister Elizabeth.
Why did Wyatt's Rebellion fail?
The rebellion collapsed when Courtenay's arrest on the 21st of January 1554 forced the conspirators to act weeks ahead of their planned the 18th of March date. Carew fled to France, Suffolk was betrayed hiding in a hollow tree, and Croft was surrounded and forced to surrender. Wyatt reached London but found the gates shut and the city's defences hardened by Mary's speech at the Guildhall, which rallied an estimated 25,000 defenders.
What happened to Thomas Wyatt the Younger after the rebellion?
Thomas Wyatt was imprisoned after his surrender on the 7th of February 1554 and tried on the 15th of March. He pleaded guilty to treason and was sentenced to death by hanging, drawing, and quartering. On the 11th of April 1554, just before his execution, he publicly declared that neither Elizabeth nor Courtenay had been involved in the rebellion, recanting testimony he had given at trial.
Was Princess Elizabeth involved in Wyatt's Rebellion?
Elizabeth was not an active participant. Despite intense pressure and the use of torture to extract evidence against her, no conclusive proof of her involvement was found. She was imprisoned in the Tower of London on the 18th of March 1554 and released on the 19th of May 1554, though she remained under confinement. Wyatt himself, on the scaffold, avowed her innocence.
Who was the only rebel acquitted at trial after Wyatt's Rebellion?
Sir Nicholas Throckmorton was the only insurgent acquitted after the rebellion. His trial on the 17th of April 1554 saw him challenge second-hand testimony and demand that accusers appear in person. The jury returned a unanimous "Not guilty" verdict despite pressure to reconsider. The jurors were subsequently arrested and held until winter, then released only on payment of exorbitant fines.
How many people were executed for their role in Wyatt's Rebellion?
Out of approximately 3,000 captured insurgents, only about 150 were executed. A general execution of common prisoners began on the 12th of February 1554 with gallows erected across London. The remaining prisoners were freed on the 20th of January 1555 at the request of Philip of Spain. Lady Jane Grey and her husband Lord Guildford Dudley were also executed on the 12th of February, despite having no part in the rebellion.