it is a triumphal progress. The army of the North is cheered everywhere that they march. The wet weather does not delay them; they are greeted as if they were spring itself. A brief note from Cecil to Hastings (for it seems that I am not to be trusted with news) warns us that they have taken the great city of Durham, without a shot being fired. They ordered Mass to be said in the cathedral; they threw down the Protestant prayer book and returned the altar to the right place. People flocked to be blessed and the priests blazed out in their vestments. The statues are reappearing in the shrines; the candles are lit; the good times have come again; the country will be free. They have restored the old faith in the land of the prince bishops and once again the cathedral arches have rung to the true word of God in Latin. Hundreds came to hear Mass, thousands more were told of it and are filled with joy, flocking to their own parish churches to ring the bells backwards to show that the new order is turned upside down again, running to fetch their sickles and their pitchforks, desperate to fight a war on the side of the angels. The priests who were forced on pain of death to put out the Bible where anyone could see it, as if it were a common book, but hide the holy bread, can now follow the church’s orders once again and take back the Bible into their keeping but show the holy bread to all who come to worship it. The stone altars are back; the stoups are filled once more with holy water; the churches are warm again, murmuring with prayers. Once again you can buy a Mass for the soul of a beloved; once again you can claim sanctuary. The old religion has returned and the people can have its comfort. Elizabeth’s peace and Elizabeth’s religion are tumbling about her ears together and Bess and I will fall over and over in the ruins.
Cecil writes with fragile bravado that Queen Elizabeth is sending an army north, they are mustered and marching as fast as they can. But I know they will be too few and too late. These will be men from Kent, men from Wiltshire, they will be tired by the time they get here, and they will be far from home. They will be disinclined to fight men of the North, on their own lands, proud of their own religion. The southerners will be afraid. We of the North are known as hard men, men who take no prisoners. When the North rises, no one can stand against us. Those who remember the stories of the bitter years of the war of York against Lancaster will prefer to stay home and let these rival queens battle it out between themselves. No one wants to join in another war between the North and the South. Only the northerners are eager for battle because they know that God is on their side, and they have nothing to lose and are certain to win.
Many—both southerners and northerners—will believe that Queen Mary has every right to her freedom and should fight for it. Some, I know, will think that she has a right to the English throne and will not join an army against her. They will not march against a legitimate heir to the throne; who would raise a sword against good King Henry’s own kin? The grandchild of his beloved sister? Such a true Tudor should be defended by every Englishman. So hundreds, perhaps thousands will come north to fight for her and for the old religion, and for the ways that they love. Most of the country would go back to the old ways if they could, and this is their greatest chance. The earls have raised the banner of the sacred wounds of Christ. The people will flock to it.
Cecil has no news of Howard, and his silence to us shows the extent of his fear. When the duke brings his men into the battlefield, he will outnumber any that Elizabeth could arm. He will turn out half of England with him. The Howard family have commanded most of the east of the country for generations, as princes in their own liberty. When the Howards declare for the king on the throne, half the country goes with them, as thoughtless as hounds to the horn.