e point
at which the insurgent forces were to unite; his friends had done
their work well, and in all directions the yeomen and the peasants
rose in arms. Cheyne threw himself into Dover Castle: Southwell and
Abergavenny held to the queen as had been feared; Abergavenny raised
two thousand men, and attacked and dispersed a party of insurgents
under Sir Henry Isly on Wrotham Heath; but Abergavenny's followers
deserted him immediately afterwards, and marched to Rochester to
Wyatt; Southwell could do nothing; he believed that the rebellion
would spread to London, and that Mary would be lost.[217]

[Footnote 217: Southwell to Sir William Petre: _MS.
Mary. Domestic_, State Paper Office.]

{p.093} On the 26th, Wyatt, being master of Rochester and the Medway,
seized the queen's ships that were in the river, took possession of
their guns and ammunition, proclaimed Abergavenny, Southwell, and
another gentleman traitors to the commonwealth,[218] and set himself
to organise the force which continued to pour in upon him. Messengers,
one after another, hurried to London with worse and worse news;
Northampton was arrested and sent to the Tower, but Suffolk and his
brothers were gone; and, after all which had been said of raising
troops, when the need came for them there were none beyond the
ordinary guard. The queen had to rely only on the musters of the city
and the personal retainers of the council and the other peers; both of
which resources she had but too much reason to distrust. In fact, the
council, dreading the use to which the queen might apply a body of
regular troops, had resisted all her endeavours to raise such a body;
Paget had laboured loyally for a fortnight, and at the end he assured
the queen on his knees that he had not been allowed to enlist a
man.[219] Divided on all other points, the motley group of ministers
agreed to keep Mary powerless; with the exception of Gardiner and
Paget, they were all, perhaps, unwilling to check too soon a
demonstration which, kept within bounds, might prove the justice of
their own objections.

[Footnote 218: "You shall understand that Henry
Lord of Abergavenny; Robert Southwell, knight, and
George Clarke, gentleman, have most traitorously,
to the disturbance of the commonwealth, stirred and
raised up the queen's most loving subjects of this