But the former, warned in time, had escaped the snare; and the Duke of
Northumberland, finding further dissimulation useless, boldly proclaimed
his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, queen.

On July 10, 1553, Queen Jane, the wisest and most beautiful woman in the
kingdom, though only sixteen years of age, was conducted in state to the
Tower, where it was the custom for the monarchs of England to spend the
first few days of their reign.

But the crowds who watched her departure from Durham House, in the
Strand, were silent and sullen. Her youthful beauty and grace might win
an involuntary cry of admiration, but the heart of the people was not
hers. They recognised that she was but the tool of her father-in-law,
whom, because of his overweening ambition, they hated.

All the pride and pomp of silken banners and cloth of gold could not
mask the gloomy presage of the young queen's reign. The very heavens
thundered; and owing to the press of boats that surrounded the
procession, many small craft were overturned and their occupants thrown
into the water. And if further signs of portending evil were wanted,
they could be discerned in the uneasy whisperings of those lords of the
Privy Council who were present, or in the sinister face of the Spaniard,
Simon Renard, ambassador to the Emperor Charles V.

"This farce will not last long," he said to De Noailles, the French
ambassador. "The Privy Council are the duke's secret enemies, and
through them I shall strike the scepter from Jane's grasp and place it
in the hand of Mary."

Elsewhere in the procession, Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, uttered